MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR
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magine what happens when education, discovery, innovation and entrepreneurship all come together to improve healthcare. It happens here every day.
Our BME program integrates elements of each of these in how we teach students, conduct research, translate discoveries into clinical practice, and deliver inventions to patients who need them through technology transfer and commercialization. You will find many examples of the innovative programs we have initiated to help achieve this vision throughout this issue of the BME Monitor.
Our BME undergraduate students study in one of the only engineering degree programs anywhere that offers continuous experiential learning by requiring real-world design projects for every BME student, every semester throughout the entire curriculum. Not only do our students actively learn by working on actual problems, but these experiences result in novel solutions that help patents, make scientific contributions to biomedical research, and open opportunities to initiate new business ventures.
Graduate students interested in innovation can participate in the UW-Madison BME innovations program BIOME. A biome is an interacting local group of distinctive biological communities. It is also an acronym for Bio Innovations and Opportunities in Medicine and Engineering, an exciting and unique program that fosters collaborative solutions to clinical problems. Students identify and vet solutions by considering the technology, market potential and regulatory barriers, and by networking with researchers and clinicians throughout the vast medical and bioscience community at our university to help realize the most promising innovations.
Our department is committed to basic and translational research in an interdisciplinary environment. I invite you to learn about some of our faculty members’ recent and exciting research accomplishments in this issue of the BME Monitor. Our entrepreneurial faculty and affiliates lead the university in patent applications and startup companies. Translational research involves BME faculty and graduate students in interdisciplinary projects that envision commercial products at their inception. We are privileged to have been selected by the W.H. Coulter Foundation for a Translational Research Partnership Award in Biomedical Engineering, which is now in its third year. Through this award, the department supports promising translational research projects that involve collaborations between biomedical engineers and clinicians and help move technological solutions into clinical application through patenting, licensing and commercialization. In just two years, this program has funded 15 new research projects that have resulted in 45 patent disclosures to WARF, the university office of technology transfer, as well as 21 patent applications and two faculty start-up companies.
We welcome Assistant Professor Pamela Kreeger to the department, who joins us from MIT, with a PhD from Northwestern University. Her research aims to advance our understanding and treatment of diseases central to women’s health by using predictive computational models of how changes in the cellular environment impact cell fate in breast and ovarian cancers.
Next year, our department celebrates its 10th anniversary since its founding. Watch for activities and events that will commemorate this milestone on the BME web page at www.bme.wisc.edu. If you are an alum of the BME department, the BME graduate program, or the College of Engineering in a biomedical-related field, we want to hear from you and learn about your accomplishments and your current circumstances.
We depend on our friends like you to spread the word about our department. Think of us when you become aware of opportunities in your profession or business that might benefit our department. We are ever grateful for your generous support. And please keep in touch.
Warm regards,
Robert
G. Radwin
Room 2130 Engineering Centers Building
1550 Engineering Drive
Madison, WI 53706-1609
Tel: 608/263-4660
Fax: 608/265-9239
E-mail: bme@engr.wisc.edu
