Under the leadership of Sanjeev G. Shroff, PhD the National Institutes of Health (NHLIB) has awarded the Department of Bioengineering a pre-doctoral training program aimed at educating talented students from engineering and other quantitative sciences for careers in biomedical research in the cardiovascular area. The University has been at the forefront of education and research in this field, with two key components contributing to this status:
- First, a mechanism is in place whereby our students are exposed first-hand to actual clinical problems requiring bioengineering input for their solution within various medical disciplines (e.g., cardiology, cardio-thoracic surgery, vascular surgery, radiology).
- Second, there has been, and continues to be, a significant Institutional commitment to these research and educational endeavors.
The new program is interdisciplinary and interdepartmental in nature. Although the Department of Bioengineering forms the core, the training faculty is drawn from a number of departments: Chemical Engineering, Cell Biology & Physiology, Medicine (Cardiology), Critical Care Medicine, Pediatrics (Cardiology), Surgery (Cardio-thoracic and Vascular), and Radiology.
The participating faculty members are (bio)engineers, physiologists, biophysicist, cell and molecular biologists, adult and pediatric cardiologists, cardio-thoracic surgeons, and critical care specialists, with vigorous and well-funded research programs.
There are three focus areas of this program:
- Basic understanding and quantitative characterization of native (normal and pathological conditions) and perturbed (i.e., with deployment of man-made devices or constructs) cardiovascular function at various levels of organization (cell, tissue, whole organ),
- Imaging for functional assessment at various levels of organization (cell, tissue, whole organ), and
- Design and optimization of artificial devices and constructs (mechanical, tissue-engineered, and hybrid).
Students will be drawn mainly from engineering schools, although they may also come from biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Program coursework (12 didactic courses and several workshops) is designed to provide both breadth and depth in engineering and biological sciences and also includes a formal exposure to biostatistics, bioethics, and professional and career development issues. One novel aspect of the program is that students are required to formally participate in a clinical experience (Clinical Internship and Rotation). Finally, each student receives extensive research training in the laboratories of the training faculty.
We believe the new program provides a unique educational and research experience with respect to basic and applied cardiovascular engineering and sciences.
This new program compliments the current training programs in this region and expands the opportunities in the Undergraduate, Pre and Post Doctoral Tissue Engineering Training Programs. The McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine has in place an NIH finded educational program “Cellular Approaches to Tissue Engineering and Regeneration” (CATER)
The goal of the CATER training program is to provide a solid foundation upon which to build a productive independent career in cellular and tissue based therapy for human disease and injury. This goal is accomplished via a highly coordinated and mentored interdisciplinary training program with a combination of required and elective courses, research activities, and specialized training opportunities and grants.
This is the only region in the country that provides training in tissue engineering for Undergraduates (PTEI), Pre-Doctoral (McGowan Institute and Bioengineering) and Post-Doctoral (PTEI) students that is supported through NIH training grants.