The Best Places to Be a Biomedical Engineer

ScienceDaily | March 28, 2019

A team led by Feng Zhao, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Michigan Technological University, recently published two new papers on best practices in engineering prevascularized tissues. The team's research paper, published in Theranostics, focuses on developing a stem cell cardiac patch made with tissue engineered with tiny blood vessels to be like real heart muscled. Their review paper published in Acta Biomaterialia examines the pros and cons of six innovative strategies for aligning the microvessels in engineered tissues. The vascular system brings nutrients and oxygen to tissues; important ingredients for successful healing following an organ transplant, heart surgery or skin graft. Microvascular structures, which are capillary-like microvessels, are particularly important and, in order to be effective, must be highly aligned, dense and mature. Engineering biomaterials with such a robust vascular system are difficult and depend on the framework - the scaffold - to grow the cells.

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Phys.org | February 14, 2019

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have developed a wearable, disposable respiration monitor that provides high-fidelity readings on a continuous basis. It's designed to help children with asthma and cystic fibrosis and others with chronic pulmonary conditions. The inexpensively produced sensors were created by UCI biomedical engineers using the popular children's toy Shrinky Dinks, thin sheets of plastic that are painted or drawn on and then shrunk with heat. Placed in two positions-one between the ninth and 10th ribs and another on the abdomen-the Band-Aid-like devices track the rate and volume of the wearer's respiration by measuring the local strain on the application areas. The information gleaned could, in the case of asthma, help warn of an oncoming attack.

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University of Rhode Island | March 26, 2018

University of Rhode Island engineering students wants to take your pulse-28 different ways. The students are creating a silicone wrist that simulates the 28 pulse patterns used in traditional Chinese medicine to diagnose various diseases. Ian Kanterman, Mackenzie Mitchell, and Jake Morris will present the “Wrist Pulse Simulator” to the Undergraduate Design Competition of the Northeast Bioengineering Conference March 28 at Drexel University in Philadelphia. “This project reminds us that science and medicine are universal,” Kanterman says, “but done in various ways.” Most are familiar with the Western way: A healthcare worker places two fingers on a patient’s wrist to measure one thing: heart rate. In traditional Chinese medicine, pulse diagnosis using three fingers with different compression pressures is a more developed process, a tool practitioners use to detect diseases, like liver failure. Training a practitioner to find all those pulse patterns on one person can be difficult, if not impossible. The silicone wrist created by the URI students solves that problem by mimicking the pulse points, and it also provides a valuable teaching tool.

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