Biomedical Engineering

Annual Report July 2009-June 2010

Department Overview

The BME Department is leading the State in biomedical engineering education. Of the eleven universities in the State University System (SUS) of Florida, FIU is the only one with the full slate (BS, MS, PhD) of programs in biomedical engineering. The department is endowed with $11 million from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation, the Ware Foundation and the State of Florida. One of the strengths of the growing BME department is its close alignment with FIU’s Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, the Brain Institute at the Miami Children’s Hospital, and the many biomedical companies in South Florida.

Faculty and Research Highlights

Dr. Anuradha Godavarty received a Wallace H. Coulter Early Career Award and was recently selected as one of the three finalists for the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce 2010 Health Care Heroes Awards. On her behalf and for the innovative work that she and her research group have conducted on the breast cancer optical probing device, FIU has filed one U.S. non-Provisional and one U.S. Provisional Patent.

Dr. Wei-Chiang Lin renewed his Miami Children’s Hospital (MCH) Professorship in Neuro-Engineering for another three years. The department is proud to be closely collaborating with the Brain Institute at MCH on a number of projects, including funded research from the Department of Defense.

Drs. Anthony McGoron and Chenzhong Li together with Dr. Joe Leigh Simpson of the School of Medicine received a $1.3M grant from the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine for their pioneering work on bio and bio-nano sensors. Drs. McGoron and Li are Co-Investigators on this research project.

In June, the department, together with colleagues from Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computing and Information Sciences celebrated a new MRI project: Dr. Adjouadi together with his Co-PIs, Dr. Barreto and Dr. Rishe received a $2.9M award from NSF for the Development of an Instrument for Information Science and Computing in Neuroscience.

Student Activities and Achievements

The Biomedical Engineering students received fifteen (15) FASEB Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) travel awards for the 2009 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual meeting—valued at $28,000. The Alpha Eta Mu Beta (AEMB) Honor Society, established in 2007, has 71 inductees and 31 current members. The AEMB and BMES Societies have partnered to create a mentoring program for students at Miami Dade College and the TERRA Magnet High School. The AEMB recently established a monthly journal club. At the 2009 BMES Annual Meeting, the FIU AEMB chapter won the Outstanding Community Service Award and the Most Active Student Chapter Award.

Doctoral student Sarah Erickson won a Department of Defense Pre-Doctoral Research Fellowship (2009-2011) from the DOD’s Breast Cancer Research Program, and the Lydia I. Pickup Scholarship for 2009-2010 from the Society of Women Engineers at their national competition.

Doctoral student Reshmi Banerjee’s poster titled “Response of Hanford Site Soil Arthrobacter isolates to uranium contamination” won the best poster award in the March 2010 WM2010 conference in Phoenix AZ.

B.S. graduate Carolina Bautista (BS 2010) was accepted to the New York Medical College. B.S. graduate Sam Espinal (BS 2010) is on the waiting list at NOVA Dental School. Misael de Valle (MS 2008) was accepted to Georgetown Medical School. B.S. graduate Sean Chislett (BS 2009) was accepted to University of Texas Medical School. In total, 8 of 10 BME graduates that have applied to medical or dental school have either been accepted or are on waiting lists.

Ph.D. graduates have landed post-doctoral training positions at highly respected universities: Jaijai Ge (U of Iowa), Qiang Wang (U of Pittsburg), Yalin Ti (U of Pennsylvania). Jiali Wang is a Medical Physicist, at West Physics Consulting, LLC and studying for the American Board of Radiology exams for certification as a Medical Physicist.

New Infrastructure

Two additional electronic stations were purchased to support the EEE 4202C Medical Instrumentation Design laboratory course.

The department purchased a PerkinElmer RamanStation 400 Surface Enhanced Raman Spectrometer and microscope to support bionanosensor research and a Perkin Elmer HPLC with UV/Vis and Fluorescence detectors.

Events

The department organized the 25th Southern Biomedical Engineering conference held in Miami on May 15-17, 2009. More than 170 people attended, and 134 papers were presented. The conference papers were published by Springer in the proceedings of the International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE). The Organizing committee included Drs. Anthony McGoron, Wei-Chiang Lin and Chenzhong Li.

Fast Facts

The Department has 7 full-time faculty members at the rank of Assistant Professor and above. The department has two full time Instructors – one serving as the Undergraduate Advisor.

The Department’s research thrusts are primarily in the following areas:
• Bio-imaging and bio-signal processing
• Bio-instrumentation, devices and sensors
• Biomaterials and bio-nano technology
• Cellular and tissue engineering

Fall Term Enrollment

Five Year Fall Term Enrollment BME

Degrees Awarded

Degrees Awarded BME