Ames, Iowa — The ECpE department is establishing a new core area of research and graduate study: bioengineering. This is the 10th core area the department offers.
“This new core area is expected to broaden the engineering skills of our students, helping them solve biologically relevant problems. The integration of various engineering streams and basic life sciences will be key for future breakthroughs in science and technology,” says Assistant Professor Santosh Pandey, the research group’s chair.
Pandey also adds that the new core area will bring together faculty conducting research in bio-optics, bio-electromechanical systems, biomedical imaging, bio-signal processing, bioinformatics, and other areas of bioengineering under one umbrella, helping them to identify common goals and challenges in creating a new student workforce adept in both engineering skills and life sciences.
For graduate students, this new core area of graduate study will allow them to take courses in three broad areas: bio-signal processing, bioinformatics, and bio-microsystems. Courses in those areas would cover topics such as image processing, ultrasound imaging, low-noise VLSI circuit design, computational molecular biology, functional genomics, structural genomics, microelectronics, microfluidics, sensors and actuators, and photonics.
Students with a bioengineering education often work for pharmaceutical manufacturing, medical instruments development, military defense, and software development companies and agencies, among other organizations. They can pursue careers in:
- developing artificial organs such as pacemakers or artificial kidneys,
- designing automated patient monitoring technology,
- developing next-generation therapeutic and surgical devices, and
- creating new computer-based systems for diagnosing diseases.
Faculty members of the bioengineering research group include: Srinivas Aluru, Viren Amin, Timothy Bigelow, Sumit Chaudhary, Julie Dickerson, Liang Dong, Nicola Elia, Jaeyoun Kim, Nathan Neihart, Namrata Viswani, and Robert J. Weber.
More information about the bioengineering core research group is online at www.ece.iastate.edu/research/bioengineering. For a complete list of the department’s research group, see the Research Group Web page.
Contacts:
Santosh Pandey, Assistant Professor, (515) 294-7504, pandey
iastate.edu
Dana McCullough, Communications Specialist, (319) 377-9839, ext. 317, schmidtdiastate.edu