AIMBE
Fellowbook News
AIMBE Fellowbook collects news stories highlighting the members of the AIMBE College of Fellows. Read the latest stories, jump to the College Directory, or search below to find the newest research, awards, announcements and more for the leaders of the medical and biological engineering community.
Rashid Bashir Invested as Bliss Professor
Rashid Bashir | Via University of Illinois ECE | October 21, 2010On October 18, ECE and Bioengineering Professor Rashid Bashir was one of two faculty members formally invested as an Abel Bliss Professor in the College of Engineering. Also receiving this distinction was Rob Rutenbar of the Department of Computer Science. In his opening remarks, Interim Vice Chancellor for Research and ECE Professor Ravi Iyer said, […]
Donald Ingber is Uncovering Nature’s Design Principles to Inspire Bioengineering
Donald Ingber | Via PopTech | October 21, 2010Donald Ingber studies how the natural patterns that have often been dismissed as design flaws might transform the field of bioengineering. Ingber is the founder and director of the Wyss Institute for Bioinspired Engineering at Harvard. He proposes applying the adaptive and competitive responses of living systems to the fields of engineering in a way […]
Interview with Dr. Stephen Oesterle
Stephen Oesterle | Via Yale Journal of Medicine & Law | October 20, 2010Medtronic recently released the results of its deep brain stimulation therapy for epilepsy, in which a device was surgically implanted into the brain to electrically stimulate certain targets. Will such treatments become commonplace? Well, first of all, this technology isn’t specific to just epilepsy. For instance, we’ve already developed a Deep Brain Stimulation process for […]
UTHealth Prof Teaches Nano Course in Virtual World
Ananth Annapragada | Via UTHealth | October 19, 2010On Mondays at 10 a.m. this fall semester, graduate students in the Nanomedicine in Healthcare course at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) log into an online virtual world known as Second Life, activate their computer-generated personae or avatars and head off to class. Waiting for them on the shore of […]
Analyzing 3D Video Ultrasound of the Heart
Andrew Laine | Via Columbia Engineering | October 12, 2010Heart disease is the nation’s leading cause of death. About 80 million Americans suffer from at least one form of cardiovascular disease, and each year about 900,000 people die from it. To understand stages of this disease, Andrew Laine and his team are analyzing real-time video 3-D ultrasounds of the heart. Ultrasound echoes are high-frequency […]
“SpectroPen” Could Aid Surgeons in Detecting Edges of Tumors
Shuming Nie | Via Georgia Tech News Center | October 11, 2010Biomedical engineers are developing a hand-held device called a SpectroPen that could help surgeons see the edges of tumors in human patients in real time during surgery. Scientists at Emory University School of Medicine, Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania described the device in an article published this week in the journal […]
Sanofi Pasteur Plans to Buy VaxDesign for $60 Million
William Warren | Via Orlando Business Journal | October 11, 2010French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi Pasteur plans to buy Orlando-based biotech company VaxDesign in a $60 million deal, which will bring the presence of a major international pharmaceutical company to Central Florida. In addition, VaxDesign plans to nearly double the size of its facility in the next three or four months and add another 17 high-wage […]
NIH Awards $2.2 Million Prostate-Cancer Research Grant to Riverside Research Institute Teamed With Focus Surgery, University College London Hospital, and Virginia Mason Medical Center
Ernest Feleppa | Via Market Wired | October 7, 2010Industrial-Academic Partnership to Develop Advanced Ultrasonic Imaging Methods to Identify Cancerous Tissue During Focal Ultrasonic Treatment of Prostate Cancer The National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health has awarded a $2.2 million grant to an international team of researchers led by Riverside Research Institute to develop advanced ultrasound methods to reliably image prostate […]
NIH Awards $14.6M Translational Cardiovascular Nanomedicine Center
Gang Bao | Via Georgia Tech | October 4, 2010Georgia Tech and Emory University have received a five-year $14.6 million contract from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to continue the development of nanotechnology and biomolecular engineering tools and methodologies for detecting and treating atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis typically occurs in branched or curved regions of arteries where plaques form because of cholesterol build-up. Inflammation can […]
CMU’s Philip R. LeDuc Named to Board of Directors For National Biomedical Engineering Society
Philip LeDuc | Via Carnegie Mellon University | October 1, 2010Carnegie Mellon University’s Philip R. LeDuc was elected to a three-year term on the board of directors of the national Biomedical Engineering Society (http://www.bmes.org). "I am honored to be elected to this post as I continue to explore new ways to improve lifesaving research tools and promote the vast career opportunities available for biomedical engineers […]
Langer to receive National Academy of Engineering Award
Robert Langer | Via Massachusetts Institute of Technology | October 1, 2010Institute Professor Robert Langer will receive the Founders Award from the National Academy of Engineering on Sunday, Oct. 3, at the Academy’s annual meeting. Langer was chosen for the honor for “the invention, development, and commercialization of methods and materials for drug delivery and tissue engineering, mentoring of young scientists, and the promotion of the […]
NIH Establishes Cancer Nanotechnology Training Center at Illinois
Rashid Bashir | Via University of Illinois ECE | October 1, 2010A recently announced grant from the National Institutes of Health will establish a new M-CNTC: Midwest Cancer Nanotechnology Training Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Funded by the NIH/NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, the M-CNTC will serve as a regional hub, partnering with the Mayo Clinic, University of Illinois at Chicago, Washington […]
Judit Puskas: A Polymer Scientist Explores and Exploits the Heterogeneity of Natural Biopolymers
Judit Puskas | Via Nature Chemical Biology | October 1, 2010There is often no better rallying cry for scientific inquiry than the expectation that a thing can’t be done. Judit Puskas learned this firsthand when she left her native Hungary and arrived at the University of Akron to study polymer synthesis as a postdoctoral associate with Joseph Kennedy. The lab was focused on rubber chemistry, […]
Getting Bacteria to do a Plant’s Job
Gregory Stephanopoulos | Via MIT | September 30, 2010Throughout human history, plants have been a source of potent medicines, including many cancer drugs discovered over the past few decades. However, it is quite difficult to discover such drugs and obtain them in large quantities from the plants or through chemical synthesis. MIT researchers and collaborators from Tufts University have now engineered E. coli […]
Purifying Proteins: Rensselaer Researchers Use NMR To Improve Drug Development
Steven Cramer | Via Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute | September 29, 2010The purification of drug components is a large hurdle facing modern drug development. This is particularly true of drugs that utilize proteins, which are notoriously difficult to separate from other potentially deadly impurities. Scientists within the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to understand […]
Proteins To Yield New Clues in Fight Against Osteoporosis
Deepak Vashishth | Via Rensselaer News | September 29, 2010A $1.76 million study at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute seeks to identify new methods of diagnosing osteoporosis and inform the development of next-generation drugs to treat the bone disease. The five-year study, funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), is led by Deepak Vashishth, professor and head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at […]
Microfluidic Sniffs Out Airborne Bio-Attacks and Hazards
Allen Northrup | Via Silicon Valley Business Journal | September 26, 2010THE BUSINESS: Microfluidic Systems Inc. makes equipment used by the Department of Homeland Security to detect biological attacks. Its automated equipment detects specific biological samples in the air or in clinical samples, typically pathogens like bacteria and viruses such as the human papilloma virus, and H1N1 and other forms of the influenza virus. CUSTOMERS: In […]
Bacteria as Environmentally Friendly Nanoparticle Factories
Sang Yup Lee | Via Nanowerk | September 24, 2010In nature, uni- and multicellular organisms are capable of reducing and accumulating metal ions as detoxification and homeostasis mechanisms when exposed to metal ion solutions. Although the exact mechanisms and identities of microbial proteins associated for metal nanoparticle synthesis are not clear, two cysteine-rich, heavy metal-binding biomolecules, phytochelatin and metallothionein have been relatively well characterized. […]
Top-Ranked ENG Algorithms Could Reveal New Cancer Drug Targets
Sandor Vajda | Via Boston University | September 22, 2010An interdisciplinary team of College of Engineering faculty members—Professor Sandor Vajda and Research Assistant Professor Dima Kozakov (both BME), Professor Ioannis Paschalidis (ECE) and Associate Professor Pirooz Vakili (ME)—has developed a family of powerful optimization algorithms for predicting the structures of complexes that form when two cell proteins bond together—structures that, in some cases, generate […]