At the interface of engineering and medicine, bioengineering is an inherently interdisciplinary field with societal impact. This student is viewing a microscope image of human airway smooth muscle cells stained with fluorescent calcium dye as part research to improve treatment for asthma.
Innovation is furthered with an interdisciplinary collaborative lab environment and state-of-the-art facilities such as the Microscope Hub in the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex where this student is looking at cancer culture.
With a 3000 square foot makerspace including 18 tables and state-of-the-art equipment, undergraduate students have the space, capabilities, and environment to work and innovate together on capstone, research, and teaching projects.
Assistant Professor Mona Minkara sits works on cell configuration with her research assistant. Dr. Minkara is a blind faculty member and she uses these cells to feel and recognize cell types.
As part of the weekly lab for Bioengineering Measurement, Experimentation and Statistics course, students learn cell and tissue culture, biomechanics, computational, and other areas within bioengineering.
Spotlight Stories
NSF CAREER Award to Develop Better Asthma Treatments
Assistant Professor Harikrishnan Parameswaran, chemical engineering, recently received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Parameswaran seeks to understand how the smooth muscle detects inhaled irritants and generates force at the cellular level to develop better treatment for people with asthma.
Paul G. Allen Distinguished Investigator for Pioneering Single Cell Proteomics Research
Associate Professor Nikolai Slavov, bioengineering, was recently named a prestigious Allen Distinguished Investigator and was awarded a $1.5 million three-year grant to further his novel research on single cell proteomics.
Engineering In Action
World-Renowned Cooperative Education
Kritika Singh, BS, Bioengineering, is on her first co-op at Massachusetts General Hospital in the Center for Systems Biology and she is also working on a malaria project to express a difficult to express protein. Her ambition is to be a physician scientist and says co-op will definitely help her achieve that.
World-Renowned Cooperative Education
Aanie Phillips, BS, Bioengineering, says co-op puts into perspective what you learn in the classroom providing an immersive learning experience. She did two co-ops, a clinical one at a doctor’s office, and the other as a mechanical and operations engineer at Virtudent, a teledentistry startup. Aaanie is off to medical school with a full scholarship from her top-choice school.
Recent News
Device for Collagenous Tissue Repair
BioE Professor Jeffrey Ruberti was awarded a patent for a “Collagenous tissue repair device.”
Students Receive Oral Presentation Awards at ASPB Annual Meeting
Students advised by ChE/COS Associate Professor Carolyn Lee-Parsons received awards for their oral presentations at the Northeast American Society of Plant Biologists Annual Meeting. Lauren Cole, PhD’21, BioE: 1st place in the graduate category Krystyna Traverse, PhD’23, ChE: 3rd place in the graduate category Amanda Dee, E’22, BioE: 3rd place in the undergraduate category
Research from the Slavov Laboratory published in Nature Protocols
Research from the laboratory of BioE Associate Professor and Allen Distinguished Investigator Nikolai Slavov has been published as “Multiplexed single-cell proteomics using SCoPE2” in Nature Protocols.
Slavov Research Featured on Cover of C&EN
BioE Associate Professor and Allen Distinguished Investigator Nikolai Slavov’s research on “Individual cells’ proteins vary. Single-cell proteomics can now show how” was featured on the cover of the C&EN journal. In Brief Measurements of cell mixtures can hide differences between cells that might be important in biology or disease studies. Researchers have long had tools […]