Partnerships within the Division
We live in exciting times where the pace of technological innovation in the last decades has been described as a veritable revolution; perhaps one of the most notable trends involves the application of engineering to medicine. Non-invasive diagnostic technologies, high-resolution imaging, advanced materials implants, and controlled release drug delivery systems are just a few examples of the innovations that have arisen from the application of principles in electrical, mechanical, computer, chemical and materials engineering to problems in medicine. The implications for the future of medicine and medical technology are profound. Approaches combining fundamental engineering with medicine can be expected to yield even more new directions of research and development, ultimately yielding a wider range of early diagnostic techniques and treatments. Advancement in the medical-engineering partnership requires engineers trained in methods transcending the boundaries of a traditional engineering curriculum. The Division of Engineering has a number of Ph.D. students actively contributing to the translational and clinical medical research enterprise in and around Rhode Island. This collaboration enables collaborative research among engineering faculty, physicians, and Engineering Ph.D. students from Brown University, Rhode Island Hospital, Miriam Hospital, and Memorial Hospital, capitalizing on the requisite resources from government and industry, to create an efficient pathway for any resulting medical innovations to become of benefit to society.
The important partnership between engineers and physicians is long-standing, and promises to become of increasing importance with the ever-expanding reliance of society on new medical technology. The well-known axiom “necessity is the mother of invention” characterizes our model focused on inspiring new advances in medicine through the collective expertise and interdisciplinary efforts of graduate students, engineering faculty and practicing physicians. Those involved are engaged in an environment that ‘tears’ down traditional disciplinary boundaries. We have developed a new research and education paradigm where we forge a tightly interconnected cooperation mechanism between practicing physicians and engineering faculty. The fundamental basis of our collaborative model is to create a network of physician/engineer teams, who cluster into focused research groups and address a compelling interdisciplinary research problem driven by an identified medical need. Initially a grass roots effort between several engineering faculty and physicians, the excitement around the potential to create powerful interdisciplinary teams of doctors and engineering researchers has resulted in an interwoven network of collaborations, with graduate students from all of the engineering disciplines participating in biomedical engineering-related projects.
Engineering graduate students can complete their volunteer training at one of the local hospitals and test their devices and/or hypotheses in the medical setting on actual patients, working side by side with their physician mentor. Physician partners are in many cases formal co-advisors to the students and participate in qualifying exams. The images above show Maureen McCamley testing her sepsis infectious disease device, Leslie Shelton learning about the technology of medical simulation training mannequins, and Dr. Gregory Jay and graduate student John McMurdy using their non-invasive optical device to measure hemoglobin levels using the conjunctiva (lower eyelid) as the access point.
List of Physician Partnerships within Brown Engineering:
Dr. Aaron
Dr. Abbott
Dr. Artenstein
Dr. Chang
Dr. Jay
Dr. Kantor
Dr. Kobayashi
Dr. Koren
Dr. Luks
Dr. Opal
Dr. Overly
Dr. Ramratnam
Dr. Tung
