Featured Articles
Disability-access research gets boost
Fellowship benefits BME students
Regular Features
Message from the Chair
|
As we rapidly expand our new department, we are confident that we are securely building on a firmly established foundation of biomedical engineering research and education. UW-Madison, in fact, has an extensive history of leadership and achievements in biomedical engineering. Wisconsin engineers have collaborated for decades with clinicians and medical scientists in our Medical School and School of Veterinary Medicine. Pioneering biomedical engineers such as John Cameron, Dan Geisler, Edwin Lightfoot, Vince Rideout and Ali Seireg (now emeritus professors) have helped establish the discipline of biomedical engineering by showing how to solve problems in medicine and biology using engineering tools and methods.
When I joined UW-Madison some 13 years ago, biomedical engineering education and research were being carried out throughout the College of Engineering. John Webster in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering was the world's authority on electrodes, sensors and bioinstrumentation. Also in ECE, Willis Tompkins was a leader in the IEEE EMBS and a distinguished researcher and educator in biosignal processing. Gregg Vanderheiden, who as a student in the 1970s started an undergraduate design project in rehabilitation engineering that has evolved into the multimillion-dollar Trace R&D Center, was a faculty member of Industrial Engineering. Ray Vanderby was conducting research in connective tissue mechanics in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Surgery. I specialized in biomechanics and occupational health research in Industrial Engineering. At that time, biomedical engineering was an interdepartmental master's degree program. Numerous graduates from that program pursued PhD degrees and have gone on to become prominent faculty members in their own right, and many graduates have become leaders in biomedical industries.
Artist's conception of the Engineering Centers Building, the future home of the Department of Biomedical Engineering. |
Over the next decade, even more engineers with dedicated interests in biomedical engineering joined the faculty, including Rock Mackie (radiation tomography), Frank Fronczak (rehabilitation engineering), Regina Murphy (biomolecular engineering), Doug Henderson (radiation dosimetry), Thomas Best (biomechanics of tendon and muscle injuries), Kreg Gruben (motor control), Roderic Lakes (biomaterials), Karyn Kunzelman (cardiac biomechanics), Weiyuan Kao (tissue engineering), Susan Hagness (microwave imaging), Amit Lal (micro-mechanical medical devices), Wendy Crone (implantable materials) and Daniel van der Weide (localized spectroscopy of biological systems). A generous grant from the The Whitaker Foundation enabled us to develop new BS and PhD biomedical engineering degree programs in addition to the MS degree program. It also allowed us to hire new biomedical engineering faculty and expand our educational facilities.
In July 1999, biomedical engineering became the newest department in the College of Engineering and our already distinguished faculty members joined to form its nucleus, unified in one department for the first time. This year we welcomed David Beebe, who specializes in biologically relevant micromechnical systems. Nimmi Ramanujum from the University of Texas will be joining us soon as an assistant professor in the area of noninvasive diagnostic instruments, and Walter Block from Stanford University has accepted our offer as an assistant professor in the area of medical imaging. We are looking forward to many new developments in upcoming years, including moving into our permanent home in the new Engineering Centers Building, currently under construction.
I hope that you will share in our excitement for the future. We welcome your suggestions and comments. Best Wishes, Rob Radwin
Robert G. Radwin
Room 268
1410 Engineering Drive
Madison, WI 53706-1608
Tel: 608/263-4660
Fax: 608/265-9239
E-mail: bme@engr.wisc.edu