Carnegie Mellon University

BME Stories

Byron Yu photo

Why do some people learn faster than others? Professor Byron Yu works on solving these and other mysteries in his BME laboratory. Read the story.

ACS Scholars

For the 2018-19 academic year, 40 CMU seniors, including 10 from the College of Engineering, were chosen as ACS Scholars. Six of these are from the Biomedical Engineering Department. These students exemplify the strong commitment to academic excellence, leadership and community service that is celebrated by the ACS Scholars program. Read the story.

bhin_he_photo

Prof. Bin He has been elected as the Chair of the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, which consists of ~150 individuals in the world who have made significant contributions to the BME field. The academy is affiliated with the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE). Read the story.

HPP

Interested in pursuing medicine through engineering? People take a variety of paths to become doctors, but engineers, who learn these skills through their coursework, develop unique strengths for success in medicine. The Health Professions Program at Carnegie Mellon University makes this possible for engineering students. Read the story.

Bin He

NEXTpittsburgh, an online magazine about people driving change in the region, published an impressive article about Professor Bin He, the new Head of Department of Biomedical Engineering, on his pioneering research on noninvasive neuroengineering techniques for dynamic brain imaging and noninvasive mind-controlled technology. Dr. He is excited to collaborate with top experts in engineering, robotics and artificial intelligence, and neuroscience here in Pittsburgh. Read full article here.

Nelson

BME PhD student Diane Nelson, advised by Prof. Keith Cook, is developing a method of emulsifying lung medications into oxygen-saturated perfluorocarbon liquid (PFC), allowing the liquid to fill the lungs and reach areas that inhaled medications could not–without impairing patients’ ability to breath (read the story).

Alyssa Siefert, ChemE/BME, 2009, is currently the Engineering Co-Director for CBIT (Center for Biomedical Innovation and Technology) at Yale University. In this role, she manages industry partnerships such as the Clinical Immersion Program with Medtronic, co-teaches a Medical Device Design class at Yale, organizes events like clinician pitch nights, and connects people and resources to launch biomedical innovation ideas. Alyssa and her sisters also founded a company called “Science Pants” that stencils or graphs prints of microscopic organisms onto recycled fabrics to create fun active-wear.

Shinjini Kundu

Shinjini Kundu has received this year's award for University/Postsecondary Student from the Carnegie Science Center. Kundu became one of the youngest M.D.-Ph.D. scientists in the world when she obtained her medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in December. She has a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University as part of the two universities’ Medical Scientist Training Program. Combining her study of medicine with her previous background in electrical engineering, Kundu’s internationally recognized research focuses on diagnosing diseases from medical images that elude the human eye by using artificial intelligence (read the story).

Jana Kainerstorfer

Assistant professor of BME, Jana Kainerstorfer, is recognized to be one of the leading women scientists taking down breast cancer. Prof. Kainerstorfer is developing a first-of-its-kind portable handheld device that can give doctors more information about breast lesions to figure out next steps for treatment (read the story).

Sabrina Liu

For her senior project, MSE/BME alum Sabrina Liu, B.S. 2017, worked with tiny heart tissues to determine if scientists could use them as actuators, or components to power and mobilize, soft robotic devices—devices made from highly pliable materials that mimic the behavior of living organisms. These microtissues in general could also serve as patient-specific models for testing new drugs, as well as building blocks for regenerative therapies for larger scale tissue replacement. This work was done with MSE and BME Associate Professor Adam Feinberg’s Regenerative Biomaterials and Therapeutics Group, where she collaborated with graduate students and postdocs to develop technology that could potentially transform human cells into human tissue (read the story).