Bioengineering PhD | Bioengineering | Northeastern University

The Doctor of Philosophy in Bioengineering program is designed to take advantage of Northeasterns considerable strength in multiple areas of bioengineering. Located in the heart of Boston, directly adjacent to the world-renowned Longwood Medical Area, Northeastern provides an excellent opportunity for students to combine engineering, medicine and biology. Students work with one of our 20 core faculty, or one of our many outstanding affiliated faculty across the University. Students have to opportunity to develop a course of study tailored to suit their interests or take advantage of one of our four core Research Areas.

Our PhD program in Bioengineering draws on the expertise of our core faculty, as well as affiliated faculty across the University. Our program reflects the significant strengths of Bioengineering research in multiple areas. Students accepted to the program will complete a rigorous core curriculum in basic bioengineering science followed by completion of an immersion curriculum tailored to their research area of interest.

Please note that changes will be coming to the PhD program requirements starting Fall 2019. Please contact the Associate Chair for Graduate Studies for further details.

Research Area 1: Imaging, Instrumentation, and Signal ProcessingThe Imaging, Instrumentation and Signal Processing track reflects Northeastern Universitys outstanding research profile in developing new technologies for visualizing biological processes and disease. Our department has active federally funded research spanning a broad spectrum of relevant areas in instrument design, contrast agent development, and advanced computational modeling and reconstruction methods. Example research centers include theChemical Imaging of Living Systems Institute, theTranslational Biophotonics Cluster, and theB-SPIRAL signal processing group.See Associated Faculty

Research Area 2: Biomechanics, Biotransport and MechanoBiologyMotion, deformation, and flow of biological systems in response to applied loads elicit biological responses at the molecular and cellular levels that support the physiological function of tissues and organs and drive their adaptation and remodeling. To study these complex interactions, principles of solid, fluid, and transport mechanics must be combined with measures of biological function. The Biomechanics, Biotransport, & Mechanobiology track embraces this approach and leverages the strong expertise of Northeastern faculty attempting to tie applied loads to biological responses at multiple length and time scales.See Associated Faculty

Research Area 3: Molecular, Cell, and Tissue EngineeringPrinciples for engineering living cells and tissues are essential to address many of the most significant biomedical challenges facing our society today. These application areas include engineering biomaterials to coax and enable stem cells to form functional tissue or to heal damaged tissue; designing vehicles for delivering genes and therapeutics to reach specific target cells to treat a disease; and, uncovering therapeutic strategies to curb pathological cell behaviors and tissue phenotypes. At a more fundamental level, the field is at the nascent stages of understanding how cells make decisions in complex microenvironments and how cells interact with each other and their surrounding environment to organize into complex three-dimensional tissues. Advances will require a multiscale experimental, computational and theoretical approaches spanning molecular-cellular-tissue levels and integration of molecular and physical mechanisms, including the role of mechanical forces.See Associated Faculty

Research Area 4: Computational and Systems BiologyWe aim to understand the rules governing emergent systems-level behavior and to use these rules to rationally engineer biological systems. We make quantitative measurements, often at the single-cell level, to test different conceptual frameworks and discriminate amongst different classes of models. Our faculty are leaders in developing and applying both theoretical methods, e.g., control theory, and experimental methods, e.g., single-cell proteomics by mass-spec, to biological systems. At the organ and tissue levels, 3D scans acquired through medical imaging methods (e.g. US, CT, MRI, etc.) may be used to reconstruct virtual models of targeted systems. Non-invasive measures of the physiological function can then inform numerical simulations to predict the behavior of biological systems over time, with the goal of estimating the progression towards pathological endpoints or to test the efficacy of targeted surgical procedures and pharmaceutical treatments (e.g., drug delivery).See Associated Faculty

The PhD in Bioengineering can be combined with a Gordon Engineering Leadership certificate. Learn more about the benefits of this unique program.

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Bioengineering PhD | Bioengineering | Northeastern University

Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering …

Chemical Engineers and Bioengineers Highly Valued

The Voiland School offers degrees in chemical engineering and bioengineering that prepare leaders who solve the most important challenges facing our nation and the world. In recognition of the skills learned by studying in the Voiland School, salaries paid to chemical engineering and bioengineering graduates are among the highest earned by students graduating in any discipline.Read the latest Voiland School Newsletter to learn more about current activities in the School.

Chemical Engineers and Bioengineers devise innovative solutions to todays most pressing challenges addressing our needs for clean, sustainable energy, maintaining and remediating the environment, and maintaining and improving the health of people everywhere. At WSU, we provide an education that prepares you to help meet these challenges. You can learn more about Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at these websites: Chemical Engineering at All About Careers website, Chemical Engineering at the AiCHE website or Bioengineering at the World Wide Learn website.

No profession unleashes the spirit of innovation like engineering. From research to real-world applications, engineers constantly discover how to improve our lives by creating bold new solutions that connect science to life in unexpected, forward-thinking ways. Few professions turn so many ideas into so many realities. Few have such a direct and positive effect on peoples everyday lives. We are counting on engineers and their imaginations to help us meet the needs of the 21st century. Changing the Conversation: Messages for Improving Public Understanding of Engineering (NAE) National Academy ofEngineering

Thank you for your interest in the Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering. We invite you to explore our website to learn more about our programs.

Read about the naming of The Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering.

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Corn Germ Meal Market : Opportunities and Forecast Assessment, 20192025 – Daily Science

Corn Germ Meal Market 2018: Global Industry Insights by Global Players, Regional Segmentation, Growth, Applications, Major Drivers, Value and Foreseen till 2024

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Corn Germ Meal Market : Opportunities and Forecast Assessment, 20192025 - Daily Science

Experts Sound the Alarm as Drug Resistant Gonorrhea Goes Global – Gizmodo

Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacteria responsible for gonorrhea. (Image: National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering)

Describing it as a serious situation, the World Health Organization has issued a grim warning about the dramatic rise of antibiotic resistant gonorrhea around the world. The agency is now calling for the quick development of drugs to treat the sexually transmitted disease.

Data collected from nearly 80 countries shows that antibiotic resistance is making gonorrhea much tougher, and at times impossible, to treat. The disease is becoming increasingly immune to older and cheaper antibiotics, and treatment-resistant strains are now appearing even in countries where monitoring practices are top notch. WHO, with help from a global team of researchers, is set to release these findings in a special edition of PLoS Medicine prior to the STI & HIV World Congress that will be held in Rio from July 9-12.

The bacteria that cause gonorrhea are particularly smart, said WHO medical officer Teodora Wi in a statement. Every time we use a new class of antibiotics to treat the infection, the bacteria evolve to resist them.

Each year, the sexually transmitted disease afflicts an estimated 78 million people worldwide. Gonorrhea is caused by the Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacterium, and it infects both men and women. Symptoms include a greenish yellow or whitish discharge from the penis and vagina, burning while urinating, swollen glands in the throat (due to oral sex), and other unpleasant manifestations. The disease is particularly tough on women, and its frequently accompanied by pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, ectopic pregnancy (when the fetus develops outside the uterus), and an increased risk of contracting HIV. WHO says the disease is spreading on account of decreased condom use, increased urbanization and travel, poor detection measures, and inadequate or failed treatments.

Data collected by WHO from 2009 to 2014 shows widespread resistance to the commonly used antibiotics ciprofloxacin and azithromycin, along with emerging resistance to the current last-resort treatment involving injectable ceftriaxone. Superbugs that couldnt be treated with the last line of defence have been reported in France, Japan, and Spain. The agency is now advising doctors to prescribe a double-whammy treatment involving both azithromycin and ceftriaxone. This is a rather grim prescription, given that azithromycin-resistant gonorrhea is now being reported in 81 percent of countries, and ceftriaxone-resistant gonorrhea has taken root in 66 percent of countries. Ultimately, WHO says we need to develop a vaccine, because gonorrhea will always remain a step ahead of our efforts to curb it with antibiotics.

WHO is also calling for the rapid development of new drugs to treat the disease. Disturbingly, the research and development pipeline for gonorrhea is relatively empty, with only three new candidate drugs currently in clinical development, according to WHO. Part of the problem has to do with Big Pharmas reluctance to develop drugs that treat gonorrhea, which are only taken for short periods of time (unlike meds for chronic diseases), and become less effective over time as resistance develops.

To address the pressing need for new treatments for gonorrhea, we urgently need to seize the opportunities we have with existing drugs and candidates in the pipeline, said Manica Balasegaram, who directs the not-for-profit Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP). In the short term, we aim to accelerate the development and introduction of at least one of these pipeline drugs, and will evaluate the possible development of combination treatments for public health use. Any new treatment developed should be accessible to everyone who needs it, while ensuring its used appropriately, so that drug resistance is slowed as much as possible.

In addition to developing new drugs and re-evaluating existing antibiotics, WHO says its critical to develop treatments that are easier to administer, and produce more simplified treatment guidelines.

An 18-month review into antimicrobial resistance warns that superbugs will kill upwards of 10

This latest development is another discouraging reminder that our antibiotics are failing. Last year, the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries in Britain claimed that a new era of antimicrobial resistance is already upon us, and that 50,000 people are already dying each year in the US and Europe from untreatable infections. Should nothing be done to offset this trend, as many as 10 million people could die each year by the mid-point of the 21st century, making antimicrobial resistance more deadly than cancer.

Antibiotics that treat gonorrhea may be failing, but theres still a way to fight back: practice safe sex.

[World Health Organization, CBC News]

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Experts Sound the Alarm as Drug Resistant Gonorrhea Goes Global - Gizmodo

Taking the Leap into the Startup Worldas a Student – Tufts Now

Noah Hill was turning in his physics homework as a first-year student in fall 2016 when he spied a poster advertising a three-day event for Tufts engineering startups.

I had just come to college, and entrepreneurship was all new to me, he said. He went to the event, and wound up in a group with two older students, Daniel Weinstein, E18, and Saam Borzog, D19. They were exploring a small device that would fit inside a persons mouth and track the nutritional content of what they were eating.

Over the next seventy-two hours, the three bonded over the idea so well that when the event was over, they decided to keep working on the project. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, said Hill, E21, a computer science major.

From that chance meeting grew their company UChu Biosensors, a dental technology startup that they hope will revolutionize the way dentists use real-time data to fight tooth decay. The company has shown so much promise that Hill took this year off from Tufts to travel to Shenzhen, China to work on the product at the HAX Accelerator, which provides venture capital and services to develop hardware.

My philosophy is that college will always be there, but I dont know if I can be director of software engineering of my own company, he said. Worst case scenario, this falls through and I finish my degree; best case, I keep working and can pay for my own tuition.

Hill grew up in Tacoma, Washington, where his dad worked for a nearby citys public works department. Hill tinkered with him in the garage during the weekends. He would buy old, broken cars on purpose so he could fix them, said Hill, who developed a love for math and engineering.

It wasnt until he came to Tufts that he discovered computer programming, first taking a class on it at the Experimental College. When Hill first learned how to program a Raspberry Pi, a palm-sized minicomputer, and made it print on a terminal, it blew my mind, he said. Ever since then, Ive wanted to program things.

The three-member team ran with the idea of the diet tracker for more than year before realizing that tracking so many nutrients was too complicated. Borzog, then a student at the Tufts dental school, had an aha moment, remembering how much his professors preached the importance of acidity in tooth decay.

Acid is to dental health what blood pressure it to heart disease, said Borzog. Outside of a twice-yearly checkup, however, dentists have no way to understand what is going on in peoples mouths. We usually recommend the same thing for each patientbrush and floss twice a day.

The issue is particularly important for millions of people who are more prone to dental decay, such as those on antidepressants or living with diabetes and cancer, for example. The company shifted its vision toward a device that would attach to a patients tooth and continually monitor acid levels, sending an alert to a smartphone if it rose to a critical level.

That would allow a dentist to prescribe a specific toothpaste or mouthwash to bring down acidity. Ninety-two percent of people will experience tooth decay at some point, and its completely preventable, Hill said.

Over the past two years, the team worked to create a prototype, with Weinstein overseeing the bioengineering, Borzog the dental science, and Hill the computer programming. Hills computer science courses at Tufts became real-time tutorials to create the company software.

Comp 40 skyrocketed my ability to write code, said Hill, who at one point was dealing with a software bug for two weeks. In class, they taught us how to debug assembly code, and within fifteen minutes, Id fixed it.

At the same time, the trio was buoyed by the Tufts Entrepreneurship Center, winning its $15,000 Montle Prize and $5,000 Ricci Prize in 2017. That in turn garnered the interest of thencenter director Jack Derby and other faculty members, who helped the trio hone their message and connected them with potential funders.

The science is there, but the guys also have very positive and friendly attitudes, said Derby, now a lecturer at the Tufts Gordon Institute. That makes all of us in the center want to do more for them.

Working at Tufts Launchpad | BioLabs, the team created a proof of concepta complete working sensor on a mouthguard, and with Derbys help, began traveling around the country and overseas making a pitch for funding.

The teams drive and persistence are unique among Tufts students, says computer science associate teaching professor Ming Chow, E02, EG04, who taught Hill in Web Programming in spring 2018. Tufts talks about entrepreneurship, Chow said, and now Noah has gone on to do it.

With an initial goal of raising $500,000, the company was only able to bring in $291,500 before the opportunity with HAX came along. The accelerator provides companies with $250,000 in venture capital, as well as engineering and marketing teams, to complete their product. The only catch is that they have to move to China to do it.

Hill didnt hesitate, leaving Tufts this fall to travel with Weinstein to Shenzhen, where the two have worked twelve-to-sixteen hour days to design the hardware, firmware, server architecture, and web interface.

When they are done with the product design, they will then head to Silicon Valley in the spring in hopes of raising $2 to $3 million in seed capital to see the device through the regulatory process. If all goes well, they hope to sell to their first patients in 2021 or 2022.

The experience has brought out my inner strength and helped me realize what Im passionate about, said Hill, reflecting on how far hes come since that startup event his first year at Tufts. Whatever you want to do is really possible if you work hard and meet people and leverage the resources that are available.

Michael Blanding is a Boston-based freelance writer.

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Stainless imaging developed by adding infrared to standard microscopes – Drug Target Review

A new method to image cancerous tissues has been created by researchers who have paired infrared measurements with high-resolution optical images.

This side-by-side comparison of a breast tissue biopsy demonstrates some of the infrared-optical hybrid microscopes capabilities. On the left, a tissue sample dyed by traditional methods. Centre, a computed stain created from infrared-optical hybrid imaging. Right, tissue types identified with infrared data. The pink in this image signifies malignant cancer (credit: Rohit Bhargava).

By adding infrared capability to the ubiquitous, standard optical microscope, researchers hope to improve cancer imaging for research and diagnosis. The team, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US, say they developed their stainless method to improve digital biopsies.

Pairing infrared measurements with high-resolution optical images and machine learning algorithms, the researchers created an imaging technique that closely correlates with traditional pathology processes and, according to the team, has outperformed state-of-the-art infrared microscopes.

The advantage is that no stains are required and both the organisation of cells and their chemistry can be measured. Measuring the chemistry of tumour cells and their microenvironment can lead to better cancer diagnoses and better understanding of the disease, said lead researcher Rohit Bhargava, a professor of bioengineering and the director of theCancer Center at Illinois.

The scientists explain that when using a labelled technology, it can be difficult to distinguish cancer from healthy tissue or to pinpoint the boundaries of a tumour.

For more than a century, we have relied on adding dyes to human tissue biopsies to diagnose tumours. However, the shape and colour induced by the dye provide very limited information about the underlying molecular changes that drive cancer, Bhargava said.

Machine-learning tools can analyse the data from the infrared-optical hybrid microscope to create digital versions of standard dyes, left, or to identify tissue types based on their chemical composition, right (credit: Rohit Bhargava).

Technologies like infrared microscopy can measure the molecular composition of tissue, providing quantitative measures that can distinguish cell types. Unfortunately, infrared microscopes are expensive and the samples require special preparation and handling, making them impractical for the vast majority of clinical and research settings.

Bhargavas group developed its hybrid microscope by adding an infrared laser and a specialised microscope lens, called an interference objective, to an optical camera. The infrared-optical hybrid measures both infrared data and a high-resolution optical image with a light microscope the kind ubiquitous in clinics and labs.

We built the hybrid microscope from off-the-shelf components. This is important because it allows others to easily build their own microscope or upgrade an existing microscope, said Martin Schnell, a postdoctoral fellow in Bhargavas group and first author of the paper.

Combining the two techniques harnesses the strengths of both, the researchers said. It has the high resolution, large field-of-view and accessibility of an optical microscope. Furthermore, infrared data can be analysed computationally, without adding any dyes or stains that can damage tissues. Software can then recreate different stains or even overlap them to create a more complete, all-digital picture of the tissue.

The researchers verified their microscope by imaging breast tissue samples, both healthy and cancerous and comparing the results of the hybrid microscopes computed dyes with those from the traditional staining technique. The digital biopsy closely correlated with the traditional one. Furthermore, they found that their infrared-optical hybrid was able to outperform state-of-the-art in infrared microscopes with a coverage 10 times larger, greater consistency and four times higher resolution.

the researchers created an imaging technique that closely correlates with traditional pathology processes

Infrared-optical hybrid microscopy is widely compatible with conventional microscopy in biomedical applications, Schnell said. We combine the ease of use and universal availability of optical microscopy with the wide palette of infrared molecular contrast and machine learning. And by doing so, we hope to change how we routinely handle, image and understand microscopic tissue structure.

The researchers plan to continue refining the computational tools used to analyse the hybrid images. They are working to optimise machine-learning programmes that can measure multiple infrared wavelengths, creating images that readily distinguish between multiple cell types and integrate data with the detailed optical images to precisely map cancer within a sample. They also plan to explore further applications for hybrid microscope imaging, such as forensics, polymer science and other biomedical applications.

The group published its resultsin the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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A Patient Recovered From Coronavirus Shares How To Handle It – NDTV News

Highlights

An American woman who has recovered from the novel coronavirus has a simple message for people who are worried: Don't panic -- but do think about high-risk individuals and stay home if you feel ill.

Elizabeth Schneider lives in Seattle, the biggest city of Washington state, which has the most deaths in the United States from the disease sweeping the globe.

The 37-year-old, who has a PhD in bioengineering, said she was sharing her story "to give people a little bit of hope" through her own relatively mild experience with the infection, which she treated herself from home.

But, she added, "obviously, it's not something to be completely nonchalant about, because there are a lot of people who are elderly or have underlying health conditions.

"That means that we need to be extra vigilant about staying home, isolating ourselves from others."

This week, US health authorities citing Chinese data said 80 percent of cases have been mild, while the remaining serious cases that required hospitalization affected mainly people over 60 and those with conditions like diabetes, heart disease or lung disease.

The party

Schneider first began experiencing flu-like symptoms on February 25, three days after going to a party that was later identified as the place where at least five other people also got infected.

"I woke up and I was feeling tired, but it was nothing more than what you normally feel when you have to get up and go to work, and I had been very busy the previous weekend," she told AFP in an interview Wednesday.

By midday, however, she felt a headache coming on, along with a fever and body aches. She decided to leave the office of the biotechnology company where she works as a marketing manager, and went home.

After waking up from a nap, Schneider found she had a high temperature, which peaked at 103 degrees Fahrenheit that night (39.4 Celsius).

"And at that point, I started to shiver uncontrollably, and I was getting the chills and getting tingling in my extremities, so that was a little concerning," she said.

She turned to over-the-counter flu medications to treat the symptoms and called a friend to be on standby in case she needed to be taken to an emergency room -- but the fever began to recede in the coming days.

Schneider had been following news reports about the novel coronavirus. The first US case was detected in Washington in late January.

The state has since gone on to become the epicenter of the disease in the country, with more than 260 cases and at least two dozen deaths. Nationwide, there have been more than 1,100 cases and 30 deaths.

Because she didn't have the most common symptoms like a cough or shortness of breath, "I thought, okay, well that's definitely why I don't have coronavirus," said Schneider.

She had gotten a flu shot but assumed her illness was a different strain. A visit to the doctor would only result in her being asked to go home, rest and drink plenty of fluids.

'Pleasantly surprised'

A few days later, however, she discovered through a friend's Facebook post that several people from the party had all developed similar symptoms, and she began to get more suspicious.

Several of these people went to their doctors, where they were found to be negative for the flu, but they were not offered coronavirus tests because they too were not coughing or having breathing trouble.

Knowing that she would also likely be turned down for the test, she decided to enroll in a research program called the Seattle Flu Study, hoping it might provide an answer. The team behind the study sent her a nasal swab kit, which she mailed back and waited several more days.

"I finally got a phone call from one of the research coordinators on Saturday (March 7), telling me that 'You have tested positive for COVID-19,'" she said.

"I was a little bit pleasantly surprised, because I thought it was a little bit cool," Schneider admitted, laughing, though her mother cried when she told her.

"Granted, I probably would not have felt that way if I was severely ill," she said. "But from a scientific curiosity perspective, I thought it was very interesting. And also the fact that I finally got confirmation that that's what I had."

By this time, her symptoms had already subsided, and she was told by local health authorities to remain at home for at least seven days after the onset of symptoms or 72 hours after they subsided.

It's now been a week since she's felt better. She has started going out for errands but is still avoiding large gatherings and continuing to work from home.

Schneider said she hoped her example, which will probably be typical of the high majority of cases, could comfort others.

"The message is don't panic," said Schneider. "If you think that you have it, you probably do; you should probably get tested."

"If your symptoms aren't life-threatening, simply stay at home, medicate with over-the-counter medicines, drink lots of water, get a lot of rest and check out the shows you want to binge-watch," she said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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Storing medical information below the skins… – ScienceBlog.com

Every year, a lack of vaccination leads to about 1.5 million preventable deaths, primarily in developing nations. One factor that makes vaccination campaigns in those nations more difficult is that there is little infrastructure for storing medical records, so theres often no easy way to determine who needs a particular vaccine.

MIT researchers have now developed a novel way to record a patients vaccination history: storing the data in a pattern of dye, invisible to the naked eye, that is delivered under the skin at the same time as the vaccine.

In areas where paper vaccination cards are often lost or do not exist at all, and electronic databases are unheard of, this technology could enable the rapid and anonymous detection of patient vaccination history to ensure that every child is vaccinated, says Kevin McHugh, a former MIT postdoc who is now an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University.

The researchers showed that their new dye, which consists of nanocrystals called quantum dots, can remain for at least five years under the skin, where it emits near-infrared light that can be detected by a specially equipped smartphone.

McHugh and former visiting scientist Lihong Jing are the lead authors of the study, which appears today in Science Translational Medicine. Ana Jaklenec, a research scientist at MITs Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, are the senior authors of the paper.

An invisible record

Several years ago, the MIT team set out to devise a method for recording vaccination information in a way that doesnt require a centralized database or other infrastructure. Many vaccines, such as the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR), require multiple doses spaced out at certain intervals; without accurate records, children may not receive all of the necessary doses.

In order to be protected against most pathogens, one needs multiple vaccinations, Jaklenec says. In some areas in the developing world, it can be very challenging to do this, as there is a lack of data about who has been vaccinated and whether they need additional shots or not.

To create an on-patient, decentralized medical record, the researchers developed a new type of copper-based quantum dots, which emit light in the near-infrared spectrum. The dots are only about 4 nanometers in diameter, but they are encapsulated in biocompatible microparticles that form spheres about 20 microns in diameter. This encapsulation allows the dye to remain in place, under the skin, after being injected.

The researchers designed their dye to be delivered by a microneedle patch rather than a traditional syringe and needle. Such patches are now being developed to deliver vaccines for measles, rubella, and other diseases, and the researchers showed that their dye could be easily incorporated into these patches.

The microneedles used in this study are made from a mixture of dissolvable sugar and a polymer called PVA, as well as the quantum-dot dye and the vaccine. When the patch is applied to the skin, the microneedles, which are 1.5 millimeters long, partially dissolve, releasing their payload within about two minutes.

By selectively loading microparticles into microneedles, the patches deliver a pattern in the skin that is invisible to the naked eye but can be scanned with a smartphone that has the infrared filter removed. The patch can be customized to imprint different patterns that correspond to the type of vaccine delivered.

Its possible someday that this invisible approach could create new possibilities for data storage, biosensing, and vaccine applications that could improve how medical care is provided, particularly in the developing world, Langer says.

Effective immunization

Tests using human cadaver skin showed that the quantum-dot patterns could be detected by smartphone cameras after up to five years of simulated sun exposure.

The researchers also tested this vaccination strategy in rats, using microneedle patches that delivered the quantum dots along with a polio vaccine. They found that those rats generated an immune response similar to the response of rats that received a traditional injected polio vaccine.

This study confirmed that incorporating the vaccine with the dye in the microneedle patches did not affect the efficacy of the vaccine or our ability to detect the dye, Jaklenec says.

The researchers now plan to survey health care workers in developing nations in Africa to get input on the best way to implement this type of vaccination record keeping. They are also working on expanding the amount of data that can be encoded in a single pattern, allowing them to include information such as the date of vaccine administration and the lot number of the vaccine batch.

The researchers believe the quantum dots are safe to use in this way because they are encapsulated in a biocompatible polymer, but they plan to do further safety studies before testing them in patients.

Storage, access, and control of medical records is an important topic with many possible approaches, says Mark Prausnitz, chair of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Georgia Tech, who was not involved in the research. This study presents a novel approach where the medical record is stored and controlled by the patient within the patients skin in a minimally invasive and elegant way.

The research was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute. Other authors of the paper include Sean Severt, Mache Cruz, Morteza Sarmadi, Hapuarachchige Surangi Jayawardena, Collin Perkinson, Fridrik Larusson, Sviatlana Rose, Stephanie Tomasic, Tyler Graf, Stephany Tzeng, James Sugarman, Daniel Vlasic, Matthew Peters, Nels Peterson, Lowell Wood, Wen Tang, Jihyeon Yeom, Joe Collins, Philip Welkhoff, Ari Karchin, Megan Tse, Mingyuan Gao, and Moungi Bawendi.

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Storing medical information below the skins... - ScienceBlog.com

UB researcher’s fascination with the universe focuses on finding better medications – Buffalo News

Back to the Future movies sparked Thomas D. Grants interest in science when he was growing up in Clarence.

The flux capacitor always fascinated me, said Grant, 34, who still lives in the town and got his college degrees at the University at Buffalo. I was into particle physics and cosmology, learning about the universe, things like that.

Grant spends these days on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus exploring ways to speed development of drugs that can save and sustain life, thanks in part to a new $1.33 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to better understand how drugs work and bring more advanced drug discovery processes to human clinical trials.

Grant holds a bachelors degree in mathematical physics. He pursued a doctorate in structural biology early last decade after his mother, Kathleen, then a Williamsville North High School science teacher, visited the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute and suggested he could put his undergraduate background to work in medicine.

Grant two years ago became a research assistant professor in the Department of Structural Biology at the UB Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. He also works at BioXFEL, a research center headquartered at UB and adjoined to the institute where he trained.

Just as the Human Genome Project now provides researchers with more ways to determine how genes impact human development, performance and illness, a similar collection of more than 150,000 known proteins called the Protein Data Bank also helps tell the story. That database serves as a cornerstone of Grants work.

Thomas D. Grant is combining two methods at the molecular level to find out how drugs in development react to proteins known to help cause disease. He is a research assistant professor in the Department of Structural Biology at the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. (Photo by Sandra Kicman, courtesy of UB)

His research involves introducing drugs in development into proteins known to help cause disease. He then bombards them with high-intensity X-ray beams in a process called crystallography, and examines the X-ray patterns that develop to determine how the drugs change the shapes of those proteins.

These X-ray beams will scatter off the crystal in a very particular way, he said. We can take a picture of the way those X-rays scatter, and we can use physics and math and computers to back calculate what the structure of the protein is in the crystal. That's how we've determined the structures of proteins for the last 50 years or so.

The process, however, is arduous, time-consuming and successful only about 25% of the time, so Grant also is using solution scattering, mixing the drug-protein combinations with a mostly water solution and using high-intensity X-rays to study their structures.

You can do solution scattering much more quickly since it doesnt need a crystal, he said.

Grant is the only one in the world using this combination. He then feeds the results into a UB supercomputer that can analyze the results quickly.

He calls the method a rational drug design process that can study thousands of potential drugs more quickly to determine side effects, the most effective dosages and other benefits and maybe one day lower drug costs.

This is good, he said, because well have a lot more capability of curing diseases that haven't been cured, getting rid of side effects that we haven't been able to get rid of with the traditional ways.

Grant and his co-investigators Andrew Bruno, with the UB Center for Computational Research, and Lee Makowski, professor and chair of bioengineering at Northeastern University in Boston, an expert in solution scattering aim to perfect and streamline the process this decade.

That may seem like a long time, but many of todays popular drugs, particularly those that fight cancer, took at least twice as long.

Still, to be sure, the pace of drug development has quickened during the last half-century.

For thousands of years, it was traditional therapies, Grant said. People would find out that some flower in the Amazon made your headache go away, or something like that. As we got more technologically advanced, we realized that there were parts of the flowers that were causing this effect, so people would grind them up, and then they would try and identify what part was the key ingredient. Then they would figure out what the ingredient was, isolate it, and turn that into a pill.

Now that we have a lot more science behind it, we can do more rational drug discovery where we can say we have this library of compounds, potential drug molecules that we've developed, and we can screen them. And we can say, How do these interact with the proteins we know that are causing some problem or disease?' And we can computationally screen drugs, or do it in a lab, to find some effect.

Roswell researcher seeks cellular clues on his quest to halt cancer

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UB researcher's fascination with the universe focuses on finding better medications - Buffalo News

West Side Student Firefighter of the Year | Gorge Life – Hood River News

Corbett Blackman, a senior at Hood River Valley High School, has been awarded West Side Fire Departments Student Firefighter of the Year award. This is the second time hes received the distinction.

He will be recognized at the firehouses annual awards ceremony in February.

Blackman is president of the HRVHS student firefighters club and has been a student firefighter since his sophomore year. Students must be 16 years old and have their drivers license before theyre able to volunteer.

My mom is an ER doctor in The Dalles, he said, and Ive always been exposed to first responder/ER life. Its always been interesting to me.

The award is based on criteria such as participation in calls, he said.

Student firefighters can go on all of the calls the fire department gets aside from calls on I-84, he explained. Most of the calls we get are medical not as many are fire. We get everything from public lift assists to fully involved structure fires.

Students are not allowed to leave school to respond to calls; they are additionally not allowed to respond to any calls that happen at the high school.

Blackman earned his Emergency Medical Responder (EMR) certification last winter and is now allowed to more fully participate in calls.

Starting off, especially my first year when I hadnt taken any classes, it was more of a bystander role, watch and learn and observe, he said. As you participate more, you learn more and are able to start helping more in calls, instead of being there as extra manpower.

As president of the student firefighters club, he leads meetings twice a month during school hours. All student firefighters in the area including those with WyEast, Parkdale and Cascade Locks are members and participate in various fieldtrips and practice burns with advisers.

Last year, students went to Portland to tour and ride a fireboat. This past fall, they participated in a practice burn that included drills and pulling a house line (setting up and charging a hose and then spraying).

He sees his service as a student firefighter as a way to give back to the community.

It can be very rewarding when you run a call successfully, Blackman said. And usually, when we see people, its one of the worst days of their lives, so helping them can be extremely rewarding when we do a good job.

HRV Club Adviser Wendy Herman is grateful to all of the fire departments for hosting and working with student firefighters as well as the students who volunteer in this capacity.

Its a great group of kids who volunteer their time to be part of the fire departments, she said.

Blackman additionally participates on HRV swim, water polo and track and field teams he was part of the boys varsity water polo team that took a first-ever first place state champion title in 2019 as well as a member of the schools First Robotics Challenge (FRC) robotics team, competing at the Worlds robotics tournament, held in Houston, for the past two years with teammates on A105 Annex.

He plans to attend Montana State University next fall and major in either mechanical engineering or bioengineering; if he goes the bioengineering route, he will continue on to med school with the goal of becoming an ER doctor.

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West Side Student Firefighter of the Year | Gorge Life - Hood River News

Global Mini Bioreactor Market Size, Share, Growth Rate, Revenue, Applications, Industry Demand & Forecast to 2026 – Galus Australis

Mart Research new study, Global Mini Bioreactor MarketReport cover definite aggressive standpoint including the piece of the overall industry & profiles of the key members working in the worldwide market. The global Mini Bioreactor market will reach Volume Million USD in 2019 and with a CAGR xx% between 2020-2026.

Mini Bioreactor Market Segment as follows:

Mini Bioreactor Market by Type (Market Size & Forecast, Major Company of Product Type etc.):

0-50ML

50-100ML

100-250ML

Get a free sample report: https://martresearch.com/contact/request-sample/2/42450

Mini Bioreactor Market by Application (Market Size & Forecast, Different Demand Market by Region, Main Consumer Profile etc.):

Biopharmaceutical Companies

CROs

Academic and Research Institutes

Others

Mini Bioreactor Key Companies (Sales Revenue, Price, Gross Margin, Main Products etc.):

Thermo Fisher

Merck KGaA

Danaher (Pall)

GE Healthcare

Sartorius AG (BBI)

ZETA

Eppendorf AG

Pierre Guerin (DCI-Biolafitte)

Praj Hipurity Systems

Bioengineering AG

Infors HT

Applikon Biotechnology

Solaris

Mini Bioreactor By Region

Place the Order of Global Mini Bioreactor Market Research Report: https://martresearch.com/paymentform/2/42450/Single_User

Some Points from Table of Contents:

Chapter 1 Industry Overview

1.1 Mini Bioreactor Industry

1.1.1 Overview

1.1.2 Products of Major Companies

1.2 Market Segment

1.2.1 Industry Chain

1.2.2 Consumer Distribution

1.3 Price & Cost Overview

Chapter 2 Mini Bioreactor Market by Type

2.1 By Type

2.1.1 0-50ML

2.1.2 50-100ML

2.1.3 100-250ML

2.2 Market Size by Type

2.3 Market Forecast by Type

Chapter 3 Global Market Demand

3.1 Segment Overview

3.1.1 Biopharmaceutical Companies

3.1.2 CROs

3.1.3 Academic and Research Institutes

3.1.4 Others

3.2 Market Size by Demand

3.3 Market Forecast by Demand

Chapter 4 Major Region Market

4.1 Global Market Overview

4.1.1 Market Size & Growth

4.1.2 Market Forecast

4.2 Major Region

4.2.1 Market Size & Growth

4.2.2 Market Forecast

Chapter 5 Major Companies List

5.1 Thermo Fisher (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

5.2 Merck KGaA (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

5.3 Danaher (Pall) (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

5.4 GE Healthcare (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

5.5 Sartorius AG (BBI) (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

5.6 ZETA (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

5.7 Eppendorf AG (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

5.8 Pierre Guerin (DCI-Biolafitte) (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

5.9 Praj Hipurity Systems (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

5.10 Bioengineering AG (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

5.11 Infors HT (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

5.12 Applikon Biotechnology (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

5.13 Solaris (Company Profile, Sales Data etc.)

Chapter 6 Conclusions

For more Information or Any Query Visit: https://martresearch.com/contact/enquiry/2/42450

List of Tables & Figures

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Market 2016-2019, by Type, in USD Million

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Market 2016-2019, by Type, in Volume

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Market Forecast 2020-2026, by Type, in USD Million

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Market Forecast 2020-2026, by Type, in Volume

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Demand 2016-2019, in USD Million

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Demand 2016-2019, in Volume

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Demand Forecast 2020-2026, in USD Million

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Demand Forecast 2020-2026, in Volume

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Market Size & Growth 2016-2019, in USD Million

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Market Size & Growth 2016-2019, in Volume

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Market Forecast 2020-2026, in USD Million

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Market Forecast 2020-2026, in Volume

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Market 2016-2019, by Region, in USD Million

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Market 2016-2019, by Region, in Volume

Table Global Mini Bioreactor Market Forecast 2020-2026, by Region, in USD Million

KEY QUESTIONS ANSWERED:

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Research is and will always be the key to success and growth for any industry. Most organizations invest a major chunk of their resources viz. time, money and manpower in research to achieve new breakthroughs in their businesses. The outcome might not always be as expected thereby arising the need for precise, factual and high-quality data backing your research. This is where MART RESEARCH steps in and caters its expertise in the domain of market research reports to industries across varied sectors.

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Global Mini Bioreactor Market Size, Share, Growth Rate, Revenue, Applications, Industry Demand & Forecast to 2026 - Galus Australis

Researchers at UT Dallas advance fight to end cancer – Community Impact Newspaper

Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas are making strides in the quest to understand, treat and ultimately cure cancer.

The decision to invest in cancer research was not top-down, said Joseph Pancrazio, director of research at UT Dallas. Rather, researchers feel compelled to tackle the issue because of the ample funding available and the potential to make a far-reaching impact, he said.

Scientists then seek out UT Dallas facilities and laboratories, Pancrazio added.

All of those things create an ecosystem that is terrific for supporting and enabling this state-of-the-art cancer research, he said.

Funding for cancer research is in large part derived from federal and state sources, Pancrazio said. Since 2010, UT Dallas researchers have received $14.6 million from Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas, according to the university.

Research endeavors at UT Dallas are also strengthened through a partnership with comprehensive cancer center UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Pancrazio said his team hopes to advance the partnership through the creation of a joint biomedical engineering and science building on the UT Southwestern campus.

Over the next several years, it will be very exciting what we develop together, he said.

An effort to fund the facility died on the Texas Senate floor earlier this year when lawmakers chose not to fund tuition revenue bonds, Pancrazio said. But the university is determined to find another way to pay for the building, he said.

Its too good of an ideait makes too much sense, he said.

A segment of that facility would be dedicated to the development of new cancer drugsan effort headed up by chemistry professor Vladimir Gevorgyan.

This is really big in terms of public impact but also addressing the burden associated with cancer, not just studying it, Pancrazio said.

Associate professor of bioengineering Kenneth Hoyt is developing a 3D ultrasound imaging system to improve breast cancer detection by rapidly processing data for real-time feedback.Funding amount: $326,124Funding source: National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering

Assistant professor of physics Lloyd Lumata is developing a noninvasive imaging technique that could detect glioblastomas earlier and with more accuracy.

Assistant professor of physics Lloyd Lumata is developing a noninvasive imaging technique that could detect glioblastomas earlier and with more accuracy.Funding amount: $200,000Funding source: Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas

Bioengineering professor Baowei Fei is developing a noninvasive smart surgical microscope that could predict the presence of cancer cells during surgery with up to 90% accuracy.Funding amount: $1.6 millionFunding source: Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas

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Researchers at UT Dallas advance fight to end cancer - Community Impact Newspaper

Bioengineering could make more donor lungs suitable for transplant – Digital Trends


UPI.com
Bioengineering could make more donor lungs suitable for transplant
Digital Trends
With this mission in mind, researchers at Columbia University have developed a new method for bioengineering healthy lungs, which could have a major impact on the quantity of donor lungs that are suitable for transplants. Since currently only 20 ...
Researchers build first functional vascularized lung scaffoldUPI.com

all 3 news articles »

Original post:
Bioengineering could make more donor lungs suitable for transplant - Digital Trends

Bioengineering | Berkeley Graduate Division

The Department of Bioengineering offers a Master of Engineering (MEng) in Bioengineering,PhD in Bioengineering, and a Master of Translational Medicine (MTM). The PhD and MTM are operated in partnership with UC San Francisco, and degrees are grantedjointly by UCSF and UC Berkeley.

The Master of Engineering is a one-year masters degree with a strong emphasis on engineering and entrepreneurship designed for students planning to move directly into industry after completing the program.

The Master of Translational Medicine is a unique one-year program designed for engineers,scientists, and clinicians who seek to bring innovativetreatments and devices into clinical use.

The PhD in Bioengineering is granted jointly by Berkeley and UCSF, two of the top public universities in the world in engineering and health sciences. Our interdisciplinary program combines the outstanding resources in biomedical and clinical sciences at UCSF with the excellence in engineering, physical, and life sciences at Berkeley.

Administered by the Department of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley and the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at UCSF, all students in the program are simultaneously enrolled in the graduate divisions of both the San Francisco and Berkeley campuses and are free to take advantage of courses and research opportunities on both campuses. The program awards the PhD in Bioengineering degree from both campuses.

Continued here:
Bioengineering | Berkeley Graduate Division

Department of Bioengineering – University of Texas at Dallas

Bioengineer Recognized Among Top in His Field with AIMBE Honor

Dr. Baowei Fei has been elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, an honor that represents the top 2 percent of individuals in medical and biological engineering.

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Dr. Kenneth Hoyt recently received funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study three-dimensional super-resolution ultrasound imaging (3D SR-US) for breast cancer.

read more

Bioengineers have created a first-of-its-kind sensor for real-time measurements of carbon dioxide and relative humidity using a technique conceived while washing dishes.

read more

Dr. Robert Gregg and Dr. Nicholas Fey recently secured funding from the National Institutes of Health to research the clinical application of variable-activity powered prosthetic legs for five years.

read more

Greggs Locomotor Control Systems Laboratory explores various innovations that assist individuals with mobility including lower-limb exoskeletons.

read more

We actively pursue research that leads to tech and knowledge transfer, innovation and entrepreneurship.

The Bioengineering Department at UT Dallas offers an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering and graduate degrees in biomedical engineering as part of collaboration with The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

About Us

With access to advanced technology, highly trained engineers, and clinicians and practitioners in the field; we provide a unique environment that cultivates creativity. Learn More

Our faculty work in a range of disciplines and conduct groundbreaking research; as leaders in their fields, they provide students with a myriad of opportunities Learn More

The $108 million, 220,000-square-foot Bioengineering and Sciences Building recently opened and houses state-of-the-art equipment and facilities for conducting cutting-edge research. Learn More

Our bioengineers work at the intersection of engineering and the life sciences, developing new technologies that improve peoples health and well-being. Learn More

We have incorporated hands-on learning opportunities into our curriculum. Each semester, students are presented with engineering problems and are given the training and guidance needed to create highly technical solutions to these problems. Students are trained on the use of advanced bench top engineering equipment from network analyzers, digital oscilloscopes, and function generators so they can design, test and build medical devices.

Our Mission

Students graduate from our program with the ability to develop medical devices or successfully navigate medical school.

We are offering four biomedical engineering courses in Summer 2019. Please register for courses as soon as possible.

ALL NEWS

Come see the latest biomedical engineering student innovation as UTDesign team present their work at UTDesign Expo on May 3.

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The University of Texas at Dallas Last Updated: December 13, 2016

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Department of Bioengineering - University of Texas at Dallas

Q&A: Mark Spong | Dean of ECCS – The UTD Mercury

6 hours ago

This August marks the last month of Mark Spong as the dean of the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. He will step down and become a regular faculty member after taking the upcoming school year off. In an interview with The Mercury, Spong spoke about what the Jonsson School has accomplished and what the future will look like.

Q:Why are you stepping down from the dean position?

Before I was dean, I was a faculty member, and I still am a faculty member doing research and teaching and other things. For personal and professional reasons, I thought it was a good time to pass it on to someone else. I think we have accomplished a lot here at the Jonsson School. After 9 years, its always good to get new administration in place and Im ready to go back.

Q:Who will the new dean be?

Basically, theyve hired a professional search firm to look nationwide for a new dean. Theyll be bringing in candidates in the fall, and in the spring they will start interviewing them. I think they are looking to introduce the new dean in the fall 2018 term. That would be a good time, or maybe even summer 2018. I am completely out of the process.

Q:What are your plans after August?

Im not going anywhere; Im just going to teach and research. Im going to be on leave for this year, but when I come back, I will be teaching robotics and control systems. My title would just be professor.

Q:Who will handle the dean responsibilities in the meantime?

The interim dean will be Poras Balsara (a professor of electrical engineering). Hes been a longstanding faculty member, and he has done a lot for the Jonsson School. Hes been here doing research and teaching. He has served as an associate dean, helping me a lot. He serves on university-wide committees. Hes done it all in terms of service for the university.

Q:Over the past 30 years, what do you think has been the biggest accomplishment for the Jonsson School?

Thirty years ago, there was nothing. I think it has been tremendous to grow from nothing to the third place engineering school in the state behind UT (Austin) and Texas A&M. When I came on board in 2008, we had very bold plans to start the mechanical and bioengineering departments, and they have both been very successful. Prior to 2008, we only had electrical engineering and computer science. Weve gone from two departments to six now.

Q:What else do you see in the future for the Jonsson School?

I think the Jonsson chool should continue to grow, We added more than 10 faculty members and more than 10 percent of the student population every year, and I think soon we will double in terms of faculty size and research. I think the student population aspect will start to level out, however.

Q:What do you think has been the biggest reason for your growth?

I think that one, of course, is the six million and growing people in DFW. Theres a real hunger for our research university. The Tier 1 Initiative has been really good for our university and for the Jonsson School. Both of these have led to the new departments of bioengineering and mechanical engineering, which did not exist prior to 2008.

Q:What is your biggest contribution to the Jonsson School?

Everything that weve done has been a team effort. Its not just me who has been growing this school; its a collaborative effort between me and all the other faculty (and) staff members. That being said, weve hired a lot of outstanding research faculty and theyve been doing an amazing job. Our annual research expenditures have gone from about $20 million to over $50 million. We produce about 80 Ph.D.s a year now, which I think is really impressive. Weve opened the bioengineering and sciences building the BSB is brand new. On Rutford and Franklyn Jenifer, we are constructing a new engineering building, which will be the primary home for mechanical engineering.

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Q&A: Mark Spong | Dean of ECCS - The UTD Mercury

Uniting psychiatry and bioengineering to study brain disease – Varsity

A laboratory technique called optogenetics has emerged as one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in recent history. Optogenetics involves the control of cells using light. When applied to neurons, this tool has the potential to cure blindness, treat Parkinsons disease, and relieve chronic pain.

Optogenetics can be used to control the activity of neurons in freely-moving mammals. Using the technique, scientists are able to study the natural mechanisms of how the brain works and the pathological changes implicated in brain disease.

Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a world leader in optogenetics, gave a talk at the Peter Gilgan Centre for Research and Learning on July 6 as this years Aser Rothstein Lecture Series speaker. Deisseroth is theD.H. Chen Professor of Bioengineering and of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at Stanford University. Hisbackground in both psychiatry and bioengineering places him in a unique position to approach optogenetics.

Whats cool now is that we can control neurons and play in activity patterns just like a conductor conducting an orchestra and we can do this during complex behaviours and see what actually causes certain behaviour, such as memory cognitions, affective, or emotional states, Deisseroth said in an interview with The Varsity.

The initial concept of [past] experiments were relatively cheap and easy, but then actually making it all work in a behaving animal took about four to five years, he continued. I had to build the technology and test it and apply it and also help other people because it was a very new thing and a strange kind of thing to do in science.

Deisseroth sees optogenetics as a mature technology, but he believes there is always room for improvements, as he and his team are continuing to tweak it.

The next step really is to go beyond and integrate it with other methods so we can get to a deep understanding of those circuits, he said.

Computer science and artificial intelligence offer new capabilities in this field, and the challenge will be to bridge the gap between these fields and neuroscience. [This is] probably one of the most exciting places to be, but it needs people from all walks of life, and all kinds of disciplines its a really wide-open territory for smart people.

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Uniting psychiatry and bioengineering to study brain disease - Varsity

Department of Bioengineering – Erik Jonsson School of …

NSF Honorees Are Devoted to Improving Our World

Four Bioengineering students have been chosen this year for the Graduate Research Fellowship Program by the National Science Foundation. The program provides three years of financial support for graduate studies.

Researchers at the Texas Biomedical Device Center have been awarded a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to investigate a novel approach to accelerate the learning of foreign languages.

read more

Dr. Robert Gregg has devoted years of research to helping lower-limb amputees and stroke survivors walk again. A new grant from the National Science Foundation has given that effort a significant boost.

read more

We actively pursue research that leads to tech and knowledge transfer, innovation and entrepreneurship.

The Bioengineering Department at UT Dallas offers an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering and graduate degrees in biomedical engineering as part of collaboration with The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

About Us

With access to advanced technology, highly trained engineers, and clinicians and practitioners in the field; we provide a unique environment that cultivates creativity. Learn More

Our faculty work in a range of disciplines and conduct groundbreaking research; as leaders in their fields, they provide students with a myriad of opportunities Learn More

The $108 million, 220,000-square-foot Bioengineering and Sciences Building recently opened and houses state-of-the-art equipment and facilities for conducting cutting-edge research. Learn More

Our bioengineers work at the intersection of engineering and the life sciences, developing new technologies that improve peoples health and well-being. Learn More

We have incorporated hands-on learning opportunities into our curriculum. Each semester, students are presented with engineering problems and are given the training and guidance needed to create highly technical solutions to these problems. Students are trained on the use of advanced bench top engineering equipment from network analyzers, digital oscilloscopes, and function generators so they can design, test and build medical devices.

Our Mission

Students graduate from our program able to successfully navigate medical school or as competent engineers able to develop medical devices.

Bioengineers Create Sensor That Measures Perspiration to Monitor Glucose LevelsOct. 13, 2016

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Fall 2017 Graduate Orientation and TA TrainingsAugust 17-25, 2017

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Department of Bioengineering - Erik Jonsson School of ...

Future Austen Adaptations – The New Yorker

J uly 18th marked the two-hundredth anniversary of Jane Austens death. Since 1817, we have been treated to countless adaptations of Austens work, which have given us dozens of versions of Mr. Darcy to rank by hotness. Here are some predictions for the adaptations that the next two hundred years will bring.

Lydia Bennets Snapchat Story

This Snapchat story depicts the life of a modern-day Lydia Bennet in ten-second chunks. It starts out as a pretty standard third-tier-friend-of-Kylie Jenner Snapchat, featuring dog filters, inflatable pool swans, and hunks. Nothing really changes when theres drama with Wickham, except that Lydia begins overusing the sad-pineapple emoji sticker. Long after theres anything interesting going on between Lydia and Wickham, they try to stay relevant by getting really into crystals.

Virtual Reality Sense and Sensibility

This V.R. experience allows the viewer to live out the most exciting year in Elinor Dashwoods life. The majority of the viewers time is spent in a sitting room doing needlepoint, with brief interludes of talking to random neighbors, and even briefer interludes of flirting with Edward Ferrars, who is fine but kind of a dullard.

Mansfield Planet

In Austens third novel, Mansfield Park, the young Fanny Price is sent to live with her aunt and uncle in the British countryside. This movie asks: What if she were sent to live with her aunt and uncle... in space? Everything else is the same as in the original.

A Harry Styles Album with Each Song Inspired by a Different Austen Love Interest

The man is an artist.

Venmo Presents: Austens Juvenilia

Did you know that Austen wrote some genuinely hilarious juvenilia? And did you know that, in the year 2085, Venmo is going to be a major studio that produces on-phone-only narrative content? At first youll be, like, I dont care about Venmo shows, but when Austens Juvenilia comes out youll be hooked. (Not you you, of course. A general you. You you will be dead.)

Persuasion (2117)

Released in the year 2117, this rare film adaptation of Persuasion tells the story of an extremely elderly (twenty-seven-year-old) spinster who reconnects with her naval-officer ex-love. In this updated version, the Navy guys are always talking about how sea levels have risen, like, five whole inches in the past year alone, which maybe doesnt sound that bad, but it is.

A Series of Plays, Movies, and Miniseries Starring Colin Firths Hologram

Just because adaptations of Austens work can and will continue to be made for hundreds of years doesnt mean that we need to keep experimenting with who should play Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy is a thirty-five-year-old Colin Firth in a wet white shirt.

A Completed, Updated Version of Sanditon

Austens final, unfinished novel, Sanditon, begins with a carriage overturning. This version, written in 2150, begins with a self-driving car overturning. Wow! Technology!

Absolutely Nothing Northanger Abbey-Related

In 2158, the last remaining human who has ever heard of Northanger Abbey will die.

Persuasion (2167)

A generally faithful adaptation set in 2167, but now the planet is made of magma.

Janes Austens

In an age when cloning technology has finally been perfected, this movie asks: What would happen if a bioengineering company created a theme park filled with cloned Jane Austens? The answer is: the Austens pretty much just sit around writing novels.

A Dating App with No Real Men but a Fake Profile for Every Man Mentioned in an Austen Novel

Its a really fun interface, and, since there are fifty billion humans on the planet, actual dating has been outlawed anyway.

Fast & Fastibility

In spite of what the title implies, this Fast & Furious movie (the seventy-second in the franchise) actually follows the basic plot of Emma.

Persuasion (2217)

This film, set after the explosion of Earth, depicts the budding romance between several human consciousnesses that have been uploaded to the Cloud. And, in keeping with liberalized expectations of women, the spinster character is no longer twenty-seven. Shes thirty-one.

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Future Austen Adaptations - The New Yorker

Artificial skin could allow robots to feel like we do – Horizon magazine

Few people would immediately recognise the skin as our bodies largest organ, but the adult human has on average two square metres of it. Its also one of the most important organs and is full of nerve endings that provide us with instant reports of temperature, pressure and pain.

So far the best attempts to copy this remarkable organ have resulted in experimental skin with sensor arrays that, at best, can only measure one particular stimulus.

But the SmartCore project, funded by the EU's European Research Council and at the Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) in Austria, hopes to create a material that responds to multiple stimuli. To do so requires working at a nanoscale where one nanometre represents a billionth of a metre creating embedded arrays of minuscule sensors that could be 2 000 times more sensitive than human skin.

Principal investigator Dr Anna Maria Coclite, an assistant professor at TU Grazs Institute for Solid State Physics, says the project aims to create a nanoscale sensor which can pick up temperature, humidity and pressure not separately, but as an all-in-one package.

They will be made of a smart polymer core which expands depending on the humidity and temperature, and a piezoelectric shell, which produces an electric current when pressure is applied, she said.

These smart cores would be sandwiched between two similarly tiny nanoscale grids of electrodes which sense the electrical charges given off when the sensors feel and then transmit this data.

If the team can surmount the primary challenge of distinguishing between the different senses, the first prototype should be ready in 2019, opening the door for a range of test uses.

Robots

Dr Coclite says the first applications of a successful prototype would be in robotics since the artificial skin theyre developing has little in common with our fleshy exterior apart from its ability to sense.

The idea is that it could be used in ways like robotic hands that are able to sense temperatures.

Dr Anna Maria Coclite, Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), Austria

The idea is that it could be used in ways, like robotic hands, that are able to sense temperatures, said Dr Coclite. Or even things that can be sensed on even a much smaller scale than humans can feel, i.e, robotic hands covered in such an artificial skin material that is able to sense bacteria.

Moreover, she says the polymers used to create smart cores are so flexible that a successful sensor could potentially be modified in the future to sense other things like the acidity of sweat, which could be integrated into smart clothes that monitor your health while youre working out.

And perhaps, one day, those who have lost a limb or suffered burns could also benefit from such multi-stimuli sensing capabilities in the form of a convincingly human artificial skin.

It would be fantastic if we could apply it to humans, but theres still lots of work that needs to be done by scientists in turning electronic pulses into signals that could be sent to the brain and recognised, said Dr Coclite.

She also says that even once a successful prototype is developed, possible cyborg use in humans would be at least a decade away especially taking into account the need to test for things like toxicity and how human bodies might accept or reject such materials.

Getting a grip

But before any such solutions are possible, we must learn more about biological tissue mechanics, says Professor Michel Destrade, host scientist of the EU-backed SOFT-TISSUES project, funded by the EU's Marie Skodowska-Curie actions.

Prof. Destrade, an applied mathematician at the National University of Ireland Galway, is supporting Marie Skodowska-Curie fellow Dr Valentina Balbi in developing mathematical models that explain how soft tissue like eyes, brains and skin behave.

For example, skin has some very marked mechanical properties, said Prof. Destrade. In particular its stretch in the body sometimes you get a very small cut and it opens up like a ripe fruit.

This is something he has previously researched with acoustic testing, which uses non-destructive sound waves to investigate tissue structure, instead of chopping up organs for experimentation.

And in SOFT-TISSUES skin research, the team hopes to use sound waves and modelling as a cheap and immediate means of finding the tension of skin at any given part of the body for any given person.

This is really important to surgeons, who need to know in which direction they should cut skin to avoid extensive scarring, explained Prof. Destrade. But also for the people creating artificial skin to know how to deal with mismatches in tension when they connect it to real skin.

If you are someone looking to create artificial skin and stretch it onto the body, then you need to know which is the best way to cut and stretch it, the direction of the fibres needed to support it and so on.

Dr Balbi reports that the biomedical industry has a real hunger for knowledge provided by mathematical modelling of soft tissues and especially for use in bioengineering.

She says such knowledge could be useful in areas like cancer research into brain tumour growth and could even help improve the structure of lab-grown human skin as an alternative to donor grafts.

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Artificial skin could allow robots to feel like we do - Horizon magazine