Research Summary

Bruce Wheeler, a new Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida, is no stranger as he served on the BME Advisory Committee from 2003 until 2007. Before coming in Fall 2008, he was at the University of Illinois, where he started in the Electrical Engineering Department in the Fall of 1980, working his way to full professor. He wrote the successful proposal for the BS, MS, PHD and Department of Bioengineering at the University of Illinois, serving as its Founding and Interim Head from Jan 2004 to Jan 2008. He was also a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Beckman Institute, and a member and former chair of the Neuroscience Program. He received the B.S. degree from MIT and later the M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. He has also served as Associate Head of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Illinois. He now serves as the Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, and has been elected Fellow of the IEEE and of the AIMBE. He served on the advisory boards of bioengineering related departments at Florida, Cornell, and the Korean Advanced Institute for Science and Technology. Prof. Wheeler's research interests lie in the application of electrical engineering methodologies to neuroscience. His work influenced the development of neural spike sorting technologies, demonstrated that microelectrode array recording from brain slices was possible and productive, and has been a leader in the development of lithography to control cells, especially neurons, in culture. This work is aimed at basic science understanding of the behavior of small populations of neurons, in hopes of creating better insights into the functioning of the brain.

Publications: 

WheelerCVPubsJan2012.pdf