BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING
Wisconsin BME: Design Start to Finish
Fall 2007

Luke Harris, B.S. BME:
What I like about the biomedical engineering design course 
is that you're given 30 different projects and you're able 
to select from one of those ideas and then really you develop 
that from start to finish.

Chris Wegener, BME undergraduate student:
The first design project was working on a way to organize IV lines.

Katy Reed, BME undergraduate student
... redesigning the controls on a hospital bed, so you can 
control the velocity and so the controls are more intuitive.

Jeff Phillips, B.S. BME, currently in medical school:
... be able to monitor food intake and blood sugars in people 
that are obese or have diabetes.

Matt Harris, B.S. BME:
... a pill dispenser. We called it the Pill Pilot.

April Zehm, BME undergraduate student:
... to come up with a way to microencapsulate certain 
hormone-releasing cells that would ultimately be injected in the body.

Luke Harris, B.S. BME:
... the cauterizing forceps used in brain surgery.

Jeff Phillips, B.S. BME:
We worked on a new suture needle that was not sharp 
after it was used in the body during surgery.

April Zehm, BME undergraduate student:
... developing a physical model for cerebral spinal fluid flow 
throughout the brain.

Chris Wegener, BME undergraduate student:
... creating a hyperpolarized helium and oxygen ventilator.

Luke Harris, B.S. BME:
... measure the ambient temperature in a football helmet, 
so that you could try to relate that temperature to heat stroke.

Katy Reed, BME undergraduate student
Working on design projects teaches you to think on your feet 
and be creative, and when you're out in the real work world 
your project may change halfway or two-thirds of the way through, 
and you're going to have to deal with it and produce product 
for your client, and you get the same thing in design projects.

Matt Harris, B.S. BME:
I really felt that it set me apart in all the interviews that I had 
with potential employers, because I was able to show examples. 
I'd bring in pictures, I'd bring in graphs, I'd bring in models 
that I'd made, and it just demonstrated the value of the design program.

April Zehm, BME undergraduate student:
That's where I really applied all of that knowledge 
to tackle a real-world problem, 
where you're working for a client, you're designing under constraints, 
under a certain budget, certain dimensions.  
It has to look a certain way or be light enough to carry, 
all those kinds of things. 
And these are real people in the community who have a problem, 
and we're helping them improve the quality of someone's life.

Copyright 2007 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System. All rights reserved.
Created 07-Sep-2007. Last modified 25-Sep-2007.