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Biomedial Engineering News
Supporting World Health
February, 2009 College of Engineering Newsletter
On January 24th and 28th more than sixty of your engineering students, in conjunction with the Marquette student chapters of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) and Engineers Without Borders (EWB), assembled defibrillator battery testing kits that will be used in hospitals in developing countries. These kits will be distributed by Engineering World Health (EWH), a charitable organization founded to harness the resources of collegiate engineering programs and professional engineers for the improvement of conditions at hospitals in developing countries.
Forty unassembled kits were purchased for Marquette by Alpha Source, a Milwaukee based global distributer of new and replacement medical devices. The assembled kits will be used to test the electrical charge levels of defibrillators.
In addition to these volunteer efforts, all freshman Biomedical Engineering students are also building these kits as part of their introduction course. They devoted two weeks of their scheduled labs to soldering practice and then assembling and testing the devices.
All student participants gained basic soldering and electrical circuit experience and just as importantly, learned to serve the global community. BMES president Kevin Vincent summed up these experiences by saying, “We are excited to collaborate with Alpha Source on a project that allows us to develop our engineering skills and make a difference.”
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Improving Treatment Outcomes
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Dr. John LaDisa, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been awarded a 3-year Junior Faculty grant for $411,251 from the American Diabetes Association for a proposal titled "A novel interdisciplinary approach to characterize and minimize vascular changes contributing to restenosis after stenting in type 2 diabetes mellitus." Judy Kersten, MD and Professor of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Medical College of Wisconsin is a collaborating investigator on the grant.
This project relates to the impact that type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) has on cardiovascular disease. Nearly 21 million Americans, 7% of |
the population, are diabetic and the majority of these individuals suffer from T2DM. Cardiovascular disease accounts for 65-80% of T2DM deaths as these individuals have a 2 to 4-fold increased risk of developing coronary artery and peripheral arterial disease.
Stents are permanent metal scaffolds that are frequently used as a treatment for cardiovascular disease, but their success is limited by poor results in 37-51% of cases involving patients with T2DM. Drs. LaDisa and Kersten are optimistic that the results of this project and the subsequent application of these results will improve treatment outcomes in individuals with T2DM who suffer from cardiovascular disease. In particular, the project is focused on adverse cardiovascular changes unique to individuals with T2DM and ultimately tailoring the current treatment of stenting to be more effective for these patients.
High Performance Computing at
Marquette University
Newsletter - April, 2008
Ropella Named Wisconsin Professor of the Year
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Dr. Kristina Ropella, chair of biomedical engineering in the College of Engineering, has been named the Wisconsin Professor of the Year as part of the U.S. Professors of the Year program, which salutes the most outstanding undergraduate instructors in the country. This is the second year in a row that a Marquette professor has received the award. Dr. Don Neumann, professor of physical therapy, was the 2006 recipient.
Ropella has been a professor in the College of Engineering for 17 years and chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department since 2004. While she works with students of all levels, Ropella feels a special sense of duty to her undergraduate students.“Even as department chair, I continue to teach freshman and sophomore courses so that I am able to welcome and engage every one of the 75 to 85 students annually entering our learning system,” she said.
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Dr. Said Audi Promoted to Associate Professor
August, 2008
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Dr. Said Audi joined the faculty of the Department of Biomedical Engineering in 1997 as a Research Assistant Professor. In 2002, he became a Tenure-track Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care) at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Dr. Audi holds B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Marquette University. His research interest is primarily in mathematical modeling of physiological systems, in the areas of lung cell biology, lung mass transfer, lung hemodynamics, and functional/molecular imaging. Most of Said’s research is conducted in the Pulmonary Physiology Laboratory at the Zablocki VA Medical Center and is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Department of Veterans Affairs. |
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Generosity Brings Us Closer To Dream
Robert Kern, founder of Generac Power Systems, Inc., and his wife Patricia have announced a personal gift of $15 million to the College of Engineering to help transform engineering education. The money will go toward the construction of a new engineering building called the .
The Discovery Learning Complex, when completed, will integrate classrooms, teaching labs, research facilities and office space to encourage hands-on, multidisciplinary learning and collaboration aimed at developing the 21st century workforce and meeting the demands of industry. The projected cost estimate for the facility, which will be built between 16th and 17th streets on the south side of Wisconsin Avenue, is $100 million.
“The Kerns have long recognized the important role science, technology, engineering and mathematics education play in the future of our community – and our country,” said Dr. Stan Jaskolski, Opus Dean of Engineering. “Their generosity brings us closer to the dream of a new building that will blend theory and the real-world practice of research and development. This will help us achieve our ultimate goal of attracting more women and men to engineering at a time when the need is so prevalent.”
BME Remarqs
Biomedical Engineering at Marquette University
Spring 2006 Newsletter (1 MB)
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