Message from the Chair

While Biomedical Engineering (BME) has been a program at the University of Michigan for more than 45 years, the BME Department just recently passed its ten-year mark. We've made remarkable progress in the last decade. U-M BME currently has one of the largest graduate programs in the U.S. and a fast growing undergraduate program. To build upon these achievements, we plan on:

• Increasing our hands-on and professional training for undergraduate and master's level students with the expansion of laboratory, design, and internship experiences. Just recently several of our students have been recognized for their work in our BME design class. In alignment with U-M's College of Engineering, we are also expanding training in entrepreneurship and creating a new Master of Engineering professional degree program.

• Strengthening our ties with the highly ranked U-M Medical School and working closely with U-M clinicians and researchers. These connections will help increase the translational focus of BME's research and educational programs and cultivate our Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Translational Research Partnership Program. One of these recent partnerships has already led to a marketable technology.

• Building up the BME faculty by at least two core faculty per year focusing on our traditional strengths, including biomechanics, bio-nanotechnology, tissue engineering, biomaterials, biofluids, imaging, and bio-optics, and to expand in targeted new areas. Brian Love recently joined the faculty and brings expertise in polymer structure and behavior in vivo. Our newest faculty member, Jan Stegemann, is focusing on tissue engineering and has substantial industry experience.

• Continuing to leverage the large and strong community of biomedical engineers in the U-M Medical School, Dental School, and other engineering departments who are affiliated with BME in training and research opportunities. Three of our newly appointed 0% faculty have primary appointments in internal medicine and orthopedic surgery.

U-M BME has become one of the premier biomedical engineering departments in the country and I look forward to helping it continue its momentum well into the future. I encourage you to read on to learn more about the exciting work being done by both our faculty and students.

Douglas C. Noll, Ph.D.
Chair, Department of Biomedical Engineering
Ann and Robert H. Lurie Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Professor of Radiology
Co-Director, Functional MRI Laboratory