Message from the Chair

--Bill Ditto
The University of Florida's "new" Department of Biomedical Engineering is now over five years old and as such it is appropriate to reflect upon some of the accomplishments of our faculty, staff and students over the past five years. Some numbers:
  • Grown to a dozen core faculty members
  • Tripled the number of our PhD students
  • Conferred 80 degrees (25 PhDs and 55 Masters)
  • Raised the Departmental Endowment to over $22M
  • Become the first named department at the University of Florida
  • Received over $11M in gifts and donations from the J. Crayton Pruitt, Sr. family, Shepard Broad Foundation, and Alpha One Foundation
  • Attracted millions of dollars in funding from NIH, NSF, ONR, and Industry
  • Generated over $60M in direct investments into BME and over $120M in total resources impacting our department
  • New $94M, 170K gsf Biomedical Sciences Building (opening early 2009) that will house the department
I am excited that the next five years will see even more growth and discovery. I want to thank all of our faculty, staff, graduate students and generous benefactors for all their help over the years.

New Interim Chair of the Department

Dr. Bruce Wheeler has been appointed as the new Interim Chair of the Department beginning March 1, 2009.

Neural Stem Cells and Inflammation: Implications for Alzheimers Disease

Brandi Ormerod was awarded a Ruth K. Broad Biomedical Research Foundation Extramural grant to study how inflammation transmits from the body to the brain and how neuro- inflammation (inflammation of the brain) instructs stem cells located within the adult hippocampus, which is an area important some types of learning and memory. This information will be essential for developing stem cell strategies to treat neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimers, which are always accompanied by neuroinflammation. Read about the award here.

      

Faculty Positions in Biomedical Engineering

The J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida invites applications at all academic levels from Assistant to Full Professor.

For exceptionally qualified assistant professor candidates, named term professorships are available. We are particularly interested in candidates whose fields include: Biomedical Imaging, Biomedical Micro/Nano Technology, Biomaterials, Cell and Tissue Engineering, Stem Cell Engineering, Systems/Synthetic Biology and Genetic/Protein Engineering. Successful candidates will be expected to develop world-class interdisciplinary research programs. Candidates are expected to possess academic credentials sufficient to meet requirements for full, associate, and assistant professorships in Biomedical Engineering. Salary will be competitive and commensurate with qualifications of the candidate.

Interested candidates should submit an application through http://jobs.ufl.edu . To ensure full consideration, curriculum vitas, statements of intent, a brief statement of research and teaching interests, a list of recent externally supported research and names of three references should be submitted by February 27, 2009, when the Search Committee will begin reviewing applications. Applications received after this date may be considered at the discretion of the Committee and/or hiring authority.

Professor Jiang Promoted to SPIE Fellow

Professor Huabei Jiang was recently promoted to the Fellowship of SPIE, The International Society for Optical Engineering, due to having "made pioneering contributions to diffuse optical tomography" and fluorescence tomography.

Bruce Wheeler Named IEEE Fellow

Bruce Wheeler was recently named an IEEE Fellow for his "Contributions to the Neuroengineering of in vitro Experimental Systems." This is a well deserved honor.

Professor Jiang Named AIMBE Fellow

Professor Huabei Jiang was recently named a 2007 Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering for "his creative and pioneering work in the imaging and detection of Breast Cancer and other debilitating diseases."

Highlights

BME Student Uses Google To Track Power Usage

Jason Winters, using an AC clamp attached to an ioBridge, measures the main electrical lines entering his house and sends the data to a Google charts widget on his personal blog that reports the kilowatt-hour usage in real time. Read about his work here.

BME Students Win Best Poster Awards

Yiyong Tan has won the best poster award at the 2008 Biomedical Optics Topical meeting which was recently held in St. Petersburg, Florida. This prestigious award includes a monetary travel award provided by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Chelsea Magin, a Ph.D. student in the BME department, won the Best Poster Award at the 14th International Congress on Marine Corrosion and Fouling recently held in Kobe, Japan. Ms. Magin's research on the impact of feature size, geometry, and roughness of engineered surface topographies on colonization and biofilm formation of marine bacteria was very well received by the international community. Conference sponsors also awarded Ms. Magin a travel grant.

UF Top Public University In Tech Transfer

The University of Florida is the top-performing public institution at transferring its research to the marketplace, according to a major new study by the prestigious Milken Institute. Read the whole article here.

New Scientist Features UF Study

New Scientist just published a story titled ?Laser beams to the brain reveal seizures in real time?, which features our epilepsy study. View the article online here.

Ding Awarded $1.3M NIH Grant

Mingzhou Ding has recently been awarded a grant from the NIH to study the disruption of the neural mechanisms that control anticipatory attention and which are implicated in neurological disorders such as schizophrenia and epilepsy.

New Building

Check out the progress of our new building via this Live Webcam. The building is going up fast and we are all very excited about moving into our state of the art new departmental and research facilities adjacent to Shands Health Science Center, College of Engineering and the College of Medicine.


© 2006 J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering.