What is Bioengineering

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What is Bioengineering

• BIOE 120 Fall 2009

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Syllabus

• Instructor
• Dr Jenny Amos
• jamos_at_illinois.edu
• 3113 DCL
• 217.333.4212
• Office Hours
• M/W 10-12pm
• Suggest another time at end of class (or by
  email) if these do not work for you and I will
  accommodate as best I can

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Syllabus

• Lectures
• Guests from many different disciplines will come
  to speak and answer questions
• Take notes
• These are possible employers for undergraduate
  research
• Ask them questions
• They are the experts in these fields and are
  happy yo answer your questions

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Syllabus

• Quizzes and Exams
• This course will have bi-weekly quizzes covering
  the previous 2 weeks guest lecturers.
• Quizzes will be multiple choice or true/false
  related to the research area presented.
• Quizzes will be based on these lectures and the
  questions will be provided by the speaker (not
  me)
• The final exam will consist of the quiz questions
  from the entire semester.

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Syllabus

• Project A bioengineering related project will be
  assigned in 3 parts.
• Part I will be an individual assignment to
  brainstorm and select an idea for a
  bioengineering related device.
• For Part II, you will be placed into small groups
  and will explore 1 of the team members idea in
  depth and develop a design.
• Part III will entail making a poster to advertise
  your product to the class. Parts I and II will
  be graded by the instructor and Part III will be
  a combination of peer grading and instructor
  input.
•  

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Syllabus

• Professionalism
• You will receive points in this class for
  interaction with guest speakers and each other as
  well as your demeanor at lab tours
• There is a professionalism lecture next week that
  will explain more

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Syllabus

• Grading

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Attendance Policy

• Students will be allowed one unexcused absence
  but are expected to make up the work missed in
  the class. If you know of an upcoming absence
  for any reason, email the instructor prior to the
  date.

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Your job in this part of the course

• Understand what the field of BIOE can offer you
  in terms of a career
• Prepare yourself for the field with a group
  bioengineering design project
• For majors
• Attend laboratory tours (see next slide)
• Select a track of study (decisions are not
  immutable)

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Lab Tours

• Lab tours are for majors but non-majors are
  welcome to attend as well if your schedule
  permits (I will not write an excuse for missing
  another course)
• You must come to lab tours at 330 pm on
  Tuesdays, we will meet in the classroom unless
  otherwise stated
• Proper Lab Attire
• You must wear closed toe shoes and long pants
• Long hair must be tied back
• No food or drink in labs (including gum)

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What is BIOE??
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Facts about Bioengineers

• Biomedical engineers play a significant role in
  mapping the human genome, robotics, tissue
  engineering, and in nanotechnology.
• Biomedical engineering has the highest percentage
  of female students in all of the engineering
  specialties.
• 30 of biomedical engineering graduates are
  employed in manufacturing.
• Many biomedical engineering graduates go on to
  medical school. The percentage of students
  applying to medical school is as high as 50 in
  some programs.
• There are 15 chapters of the national biomedical
  engineering honor society, Alpha Eta Mu Beta,
  located on college campuses throughout the United
  States.

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Facts about Bioengineers

• BMES has more than 87 student chapters on college
  and university campuses.
• Judith A. Resnick, PhD, a U.S. astronaut who died
  when Challenger exploded in 1986, was a
  biomedical engineer working at NIH from 1974 to
  1977.
• Willem Kolff, MD PhD, a biomedical engineer and
  physician, designed early artificial hearts and
  the first kidney dialysis machine. He supervised
  the first implanted artificial heart into Barney
  Clark, and his latest work is on a portable
  artificial lung.
• A single U.S. foundation, the Whitaker Foundation
  in Arlington, Virginia, has made significant
  contributions to the development of this
  profession. Whitaker Foundation grants more than
  doubled the number of biomedical engineering
  academic programs in the United States by adding
  38 new departments in this field.

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BIOE is like Neapolitan ice cream
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BIOE is likebasketball
Tracks of Study are like Defense Strategies
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Specialty Areas of Bioengineering

• Bioinstrumentation
• Application of electronics and measurement
  techniques to develop devices used in diagnosis
  and treatment of disease.
• Computers are an essential part of
  bioinstrumentation, from the microprocessor in a
  single-purpose instrument used to do a variety of
  small tasks to the microcomputer needed to
  process the large amount of information in a
  medical imaging system.
• Biomaterials
• Understanding the properties and behavior of
  living material is vital in the design of implant
  materials.
• The selection of an appropriate material to place
  in the human body may be one of the most
  difficult tasks faced by the biomedical engineer.
  
• Newer biomaterials even incorporate living cells
  in order to provide a true biological and
  mechanical match for the living tissue.

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Specialty Areas of Bioengineering

• Biomechanics
• Applies classical mechanics (statics, dynamics,
  fluids, solids, thermodynamics, and continuum
  mechanics) to biological or medical problems.
• It includes the study of motion, material
  deformation, flow within the body and in devices,
  and transport of chemical constituents across
  biological and synthetic media and membranes.
• Progress in biomechanics has led to the
  development of the artificial heart and heart
  valves, artificial joint replacements, as well as
  a better understanding of the function of the
  heart and lung, blood vessels and capillaries,
  and bone, cartilage, intervertebral discs,
  ligaments and tendons of the musculoskeletal
  systems.
• Cellular, Tissue and Genetic Engineering
• Attack biomedical problems at the microscopic
  level.
• Utilizes the anatomy, biochemistry and mechanics
  of cellular and sub-cellular structures in order
  to understand disease processes and to be able to
  intervene at very specific sites.
• With these capabilities, miniature devices
  deliver compounds that can stimulate or inhibit
  cellular processes at precise target locations to
  promote healing or inhibit disease formation and
  progression.

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Specialty Areas of Bioengineering

• Medical Imaging
• Combines knowledge of a unique physical
  phenomenon (sound, radiation, magnetism, etc.)
  with high speed electronic data processing,
  analysis and display to generate an image.
• Often, these images can be obtained with minimal
  or completely noninvasive procedures, making them
  less painful and more readily repeatable than
  invasive techniques.
• Orthopaedic Bioengineering
• Methods of engineering and computational
  mechanics have been applied for the understanding
  of the function of bones, joints and muscles, and
  for the design of artificial joint replacements.
• Orthopaedic bioengineers analyze the friction,
  lubrication and wear characteristics of natural
  and artificial joints they perform stress
  analysis of the musculoskeletal system and they
  develop artificial biomaterials (biologic and
  synthetic) for replacement of bones, cartilages,
  ligaments, tendons, meniscus and intervertebral
  discs.
• They often perform gait and motion analyses for
  sports performance and patient outcome following
  surgical procedures. Orthopaedic bioengineers
  also pursue fundamental studies on cellular
  function, and mechano-signal transduction.

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Specialty Areas of Bioengineering

• Systems Physiology
• Engineering strategies, techniques and tools are
  used to gain a comprehensive and integrated
  understanding of the function of living organisms
  ranging from bacteria to humans.
• Computer modeling is used in the analysis of
  experimental data and in formulating mathematical
  descriptions of physiological events.
• In research, predictor models are used in
  designing new experiments to refine our
  knowledge. Living systems have highly regulated
  feedback control systems that can be examined
  with state-of-the-art techniques.
• Examples are the biochemistry of metabolism and
  the control of limb movements.
• Countless others!
• What do you want to study??

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Career Consideration

• Diagnostics Significant current demand medical
  imaging, Pharma (SAI), genomic testing (nEng)
• Tissue Engineering Great promise but weak
  current workforce demand (for undergraduates) in
  industry.
• Comput BioE Great promise and increasing demand
  as personalized medicine advances

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Career Consideration

• Biomechanics (Most established BIOE area)
  orthopedic dental prosthetics industry
• Drug design and delivery Moderate demand for
  undergraduate BIOEs who understand transport and
  materials, need increases with education

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Career Consideration

• Computational Bioengineering
• Need is great all levels CS skills but
  knowledge of molecular biology and physiology
• Cell Tissue
• Still at the level of PhD supported by BS lab
  techs
• Companies are dominantly on East/West Coasts
  (e.g. Amgen Genotech)
• Biomechanics/Biomaterials
• Orthopedics and Implants (hips, knees, etc. MS
  is great
• Companies are in the Midwest Midsouth (e.g.
  Johnson and Johnsons DePuy Zimmer Smith and
  Nephew)

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Career Consideration

• Diagnostics
• Significant current demand medical imaging,
  Pharma, genomic testing
• Drug design and delivery
• Moderate demand for undergraduate BIOEs who
  understand transport and materials, need
  increases with education
• Instrumentation
• EEs, CS have advantages due to the electronics
• Subset of openings for biological testing (e.g.
  Agilent)
• Pharmaceutical Companies
• Compete with ChemEs, but growth for BioEs with
  strong Chemistry, Biochemistry, Molecular Biology
  skills

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Employment Opportunities in Biomaterials

• Vascular stents polymers for slow release of
  chemicals that reduce cell growth
• Spine stabilizers rubber-like materials in
  fused spines that provide more flexibility for
  patient movement
• Macular degeneration treatment to minimize eye
  injections, implantable devices are being
  developed for drug elusions. (drug delivery)

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UIUC BIOE Tracks of Study

• Diagnostic Systems (Electrical systems, Imaging)
• Regenerative Engineering (Therapeutics
  Engineering, Tissue Engineering)
• Computational Bioengineering
• Biomechanical Engineering

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What do all of these words mean?

• Well go over some examples from each field to
  get you started and see where they fit into
  career choices and track options

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Systems Engineering

• Identifying all the genes and proteins in an
  organism is like listing all the parts of an
  airplane.
• While such a list provides a catalog of the
  individual components, by itself it is not
  sufficient to understand the complexity
  underlying the engineered object. 
• We need to know how these parts are assembled to
  form the structure of the airplane.
• This is analogous to drawing an exhaustive
  diagram of gene-regulatory networks and their
  biochemical interactions.

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Example Gene Network

• Important for
• Cancer
• Diseases
• Treatments
• Material design
• Etc.

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Computational Biology

• Includes bioinformatics, modeling of molecules,
  and genomics, among others
• Allows for theoretical work and predicted values
  on concepts that are hard to carry out in a wet
  lab

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Examples of Computation Biology
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Imaging and Sensing

• Imaging is a relatively new field, even in the
  late 70s, ultrasounds werent common for prenatal
  care.
• Imaging has advanced to allow for 3D and 4D
  images as well as high resolution images of
  organs (brains, hearts, etc.) in action
• Sensing allows researchers to use probes to track
  devices, medicine, and disease processes in vivo
  (in the body) or to create devices that are
  external to monitor bodily functions (pulse
  oximeters, insulin pumps, etc.)
• Combined, they present an image of a disease
  state that allows for a better understanding of
  the human body

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Example of Imaging and Sensing
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Cell and Tissue Engineering

• Probably the most commonly used term used to
  describe BIOEs
• Aims to repair, replace, or regenerate tissues
  lost due to disease, injury, or genetic defect.
• Utilizes materials, cells, and stimulants
  (mechanical, biological, chemical) to engineer
  tissues that react in a realistic way to the
  mechanical and chemical environment inside the
  body
• Applies to many organ systems and crosses many
  fields

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Example of Cell and Tissue Engineering
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Therapeutics Engineering

• More than just drug delivery, design of drugs,
  understanding metabolism of drugs
• Non drug treatments such as chemotherapy, gene
  therapy, and therapeutic material treatments
• Involves many engineering aspects like transport
  (getting into the cell), metabolism or kinetics
  (uptake of drug), fluid dynamics (useful in IV
  applications), and mass transfer (removing the
  drug)

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Example of Therapeutics
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Biomechanics

• An understanding of macro-, micro-, and
  nano-scale mechanics
• Large scale uses such as prosthetics,
  orthopedics, physical therapy, occupational
  therapy
• Important lesser known aspects include
  cell-tissue interaction, disease processes, etc.

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Example for Biomechanics

• Instead of nerves running from spine to the arm,
  electrodes meet nerve endings and then a computer
  processes the signals to allow for movement

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Important to Note

• All of these fields are related!
• In the core curriculum, you will get a dose of
  each field to help you decide which you like and
  where your strengths are
• There are more fields that we dont cover in
  detail, which is why we encourage internships,
  undergrad research, and co-ops

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Questions?