biomechanical engineering is one of most interesting fields in the world biomedical engineers try to address all kinds of I think exciting questions at the interface of medicine and engineering I think I've always been fascinated with the brain and how it works one of my best friends becoming became paralyzed when we were 13 and I really wanted to help him walk again for me being a mechanic engineer the heart was the most similar organ to a pump you don't have to be a medical doctor to help save lives biomedical engineering with these two big fields of medicine and engineering together it's a very broad field it's the field and engineering that really allows you to make an impact in a very perceivable way when it comes to human life imagine a neurologist 30 years ago without imaging their options were very limited and that's a remarkable example of our engineering can impact a medicine very dramatically we can think we can feel we understand we interact with others but on the other hand we know very little helping works in the field of neural engineering we folks of non-invasive brain computer interface we put electro sensor on their scalp and these sensor can pick up extremely weak electrical signal generated by the neurons we're able to pick up voltage differences in different areas of the scalp so when a subject imagines using an arm or leg it actually activates the motor cortex in much the same way it would activate if they were actually doing that thing in real life and then we decode as a signal to try to find out what of the subject is thinking so intend to do and then use a signal to control a device the promise of research like this is to allow for paralyzed individuals to interact and to communicate again with the outside world we do research in the area of wireless sensors and robotics for rehabilitation unfortunately about 50% of the people that you do any sort of rehab with don't get better and we really don't understand why a major question that we're trying to address is where there through the interaction with at all but a person can actually learn motor tasks that's essential in extract survivors in traumatic and injury survivors the locum at is a robotic exoskeleton for robotic gait training manual gait training is was usually done was really a strenuous on therapists where they had to independently move the person's legs through the standard walking pattern Dyan we've formed a collaboration with the company that develops the locum app and so we're actually able to tap in using our own software and change the way that the robot works the motion analysis laboratory was established to perform clinical evaluations mostly in children with cerebral palsy we have eight infrared cameras to go around the room and the point in the central walkway the cameras emit the light that gets reflected from the markers and the computer can pick up the movement of the markers the green lines show the different body segments while the yellow line represents the force that is exerted Puran gait it's something that will help the doctors in seeing how the outcome of surgeries or intervention lasts through the time a lot of times when they come in they want to impress technicians so they tend to walk better than what they would do when they're at home the issue that we have developed as sensors are embedded in the sole of tissue itself once and they put the shoe on it's like wearing a normal sneaker can have monitoring that is a less obtrusive and it's conducted in their home environment so we can actually collect more data and have a better insight on how the disease progresses.
wearable technology has become possible
over the past ten years because of major developments that allow us to integrate sensors into garments we have the potential that if you can wear a some form of a monitoring device that your vitals can be monitored on a more regular basis and we can send that information through a cloud environment before you need to go into an emergency department because you're very unwell my father is actually an FPT and when I was young I promised him I'd make him an arm one day an amputee can live their life pretty normally with a prosthetic but the idea that you can just take it to the next level that's important to me one way to do it that we've developed as you could take a plastic scaffold a polymer scaffold that could be whatever shape you want depending on the organ or tissue you're trying to make then you might put certain cells on it and give it the right nutrients and also the right mechanical forces grow it to a certain point and then do a transplant that onto the patient or into the patient if you think about how complex the organ is it's really difficult to mimic what happens in nature one of the big challenge is the vascular ization also in terms of stem cells are a long way to go we have to understand what makes them differentiate how can we control them so that they will not develop cancer we're working on making various tissues and organs in the body and in new spinal cords vocal cords new and test in heart tissue so there's a whole range of things that we've been working on then micro bubbles doing today in the area drug delivery some of the things were most excited about our nano technology where one might be able to deliver drugs right to tumor or no other place in the body micro bubbles they're very tiny particles micron size and instead of being filled with liquid they filled with gas and because of that the visible ultrasound and they used to improve ultrasound Diagnostics so I'm focusing on trying to incorporate drugs into these micro bubbles if I have those micro bubbles loaded with drugs I can inject them into the body they will distribute everywhere but then I can disrupt the micro bubbles panels or some beam and the track will be delivered specifically where the drug is needed and so this is the exciting engineering design that I am working on it's not just research that stays on demand it's research that goes to market goes to help people we try to dream up things that we feel can really have a big impact like oh maybe a super band-aid we set it up to look very much like a gecko because the gecko has enormous adhesive 'ti on their feet so to speak and the band-aid has all these nano protrusions from so there's enormous surface area and so now who are looking at it for making certain forms of surgery easier like intestinal surgery various different types of medical adhesive applications a lot of times what we do is we license things to companies or a lot of times we've started companies and that create products there is other cases in which companies are actually coming in and they're asking us to either assess their technology or how do you design their technology so we get to see cutting-edge technologies to prototype devices major focus of our research is the electrical properties of both skeletal cardiac muscle one of the things that we're doing is really novels we're actually reanimating human hearts and these are hearts that have been being non viable for transplantation there were gifts from the organ donors and their families to the lab and if they've good enough function we'll reanimate them and we'll be able to look at the internal anatomy while the isolated heart is functioning and just like a heart transplant you have four to six hours before you need to reanimate that heart we'll get it to beat on its own and a native rhythm and then we can put cameras inside and visualize any of the functional anatomy really study this device tissue interface of new pacing systems or leads we actually have a whole free access website that anybody can go online and see the functional anatomy from these human hearts being able to make like an artificial tissue or organ to help someone you love I mean that's compelling to anyone right I've been reanimating parts for the last 14 years and it's still exciting the medical device industry is a consistently booming field I feel that my job prospects are very good in it a large percentage of biomedical engineers actually apply to medical school and go into the health career paths I hope to one day be a physician who can kind of be involved in device design and startup entrepreneurial endeavors well it's a career that just opens all kinds of doors to you I think the most important thing as a young student is to get involved early and get involved often find research they interests you because then you'll never work do rotations in different labs at your school to get a feel of what's out there and what wouldinterest you the most when I arrived in Minnesota I looked at five or six different laboratories and made the decision based on the people working there and the kind of career the people that graduated from that lab went to I started a couple weeks after I became a freshman in college and it really paid off for me it's essential to know chemistry to know basic physics to know basic engineering principles the timelines involved here are much longer than other fields in that you have to be realistic about that sort of thing you have to be passionate about what you do you have to love your research when this happens then you can achieve brilliant results I initially joined the engineering medicine biology society to be able to connect with other like-minded people that's where I feel that I learned what exciting science is going on in the field for a student an organization like this allows you to connect with people who are well established in their
careers people who can serve as mentors for you as you're developing your career and more than that actually get involved with what they're doing if you like science if you like engineering and if you like medicine this is just the perfect degree because it combines everything if you're passionate about helping people there's so much to be done as an engineer.
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