2020 Biomedical Engineering at WashU Brochure

2020

Washington University in St. Louis McKelvey School of Engineering

Biomedical Engineering

No. 10

best BME degree program (College Choice)

63%

of undergraduate BME students are involved in research

No. 12 U.S. News ranking for graduate programs

No. 6

WashU School of Medicine ranking in U.S. News

2

McKelvey School of Engineering

WashU BME

22

48% o f bme st u d ents are women

full-t im e faculty

Students fa l l 2019

100% of ph d st u d ents a r e f u l ly f u nd ed

PhD student research support

224

under g r aduat e

33

147

m ast e r’s

phd

33%

of PhD students received an external fellowship in 2019

11

ni h t r a i ni ng g r a nts

6

md /ph d t r a i ni ng pr og r a m

Degree programs

133

BS in Biomedical Engineering MS in Biomedical Engineering PhD in Biomedical Engineering

nu mb er of

p ubl i cat i ons i n 2019

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u ni vers i t y f el lows h i ps

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ns f f el lows h i ps

1

d epa rt ment of d ef ens e f el lows h i p

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion In the McKelvey School of Engineering we believe in creating and maintaining a culture that embraces and appreciates the strength and value of differences in gender, race, ethnicity, geography, socioeconomic status, age, politics, philosophy, disability and sexual orientation.

Department of Biomedical Engineering

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BME Research

Research areas

100

+

affil iat e facu lt y members f r om acr oss the u ni vers i t y

Top departments for BME student research: » Biomedical Engineering » Cell Biology & Physiology Biomedical & Biological Imaging Cardiovascular Engineering Molecular & Cellular Systems Engineering Neural Engineering

» Computer Science & Engineering » Electrical & Systems Engineering » Genetics » Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science » Neurology

Orthopedic Engineering

» Neuroscience

Regenerative Engineering in Medicine

» Neurosurgery » Obstetrics/Gynecology » Orthopaedic Surgery » Pathology & Immunology » Radiation Oncology » Radiology

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McKelvey School of Engineering

Undergraduate research opportunities at WashU: » Center for Innovation in Neuroscience and Technology Fellowship » McKelvey Undergraduate Research Scholars » St. Louis Summer Internship » Summer Undergraduate Research Award (SURA) » WashU Biology Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program (BioSURF) » WashU Summer Engineering Fellowship (WUSEF)

WashU research centers for biomedical research collaboration

Research news

Cardiac Bioelectricity & Arrhythmia Center (CBAC) Center for Cellular Imaging Center for Cyborg and Bio-robotics Research Center for Engineering MechanoBiology (CEMB) Center for High Performance Computing (CHPC) Center for Human Immunology & Immunotherapy Programs (CHiiPS) Center for Innovation in Neuroscience and Technology (CINT) Center for the Investigation of Membrane Excitability Diseases (CIMED) Center for Regenerative Medicine (CRM) Center for Science and Engineering of Living Systems (CSELS) Children’s Discovery Institute Genome Engineering & iPSC Center (GEiC) Hope Center for Neurological Disorders Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS) Institute for Materials Science and Engineering (IMSE) McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience McDonnell Genome Institute (MGI) Musculoskeletal Research Center (MRC) Siteman Cancer Center

Researchers one step closer to bomb-sniffing cyborg locusts

Targeting ultrasound at the brain for noninvasive diagnosis of brain cancer

Previous research from WashU has demonstrated both the ability to control the locusts and the ability to read their brains, so to speak, to discern what it is they are smelling. And now, thanks to new research from the McKelvey School of Engineering, the third question has been settled.

The answer, again: ‘yes.’

“Now we can implant the electrodes, seal the locust and transport them to mobile environments,” Raman said. One day, that environment might be one in which homeland security is searching for explosives.

In a pre-proof published online Aug. 6 in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X, researchers showed how they were able to hijack a locust’s olfactory system to both detect and discriminate between different explosive scents — all within a few hundred milliseconds of exposure.

Previous work in Raman’s lab led to the discovery that the locust olfactory system could be decoded as an ‘or-of-ands’ logical operation. This allowed researchers to determine what a locust was smelling in different contexts.

Brain tumors are typically diagnosed using MRI imaging, as taking a sample for a tissue biopsy is risky and may not be possible due to tumor location or a patient’s poor health conditions. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis are developing a method to diagnose brain tumors without any incisions.

The method is developed by a team led by Hong Chen, assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering and of radiation oncology at the School of Medicine. It uses ultrasonic energy to target tumors deep in the brain. Once located, the researchers inject microbubbles into the blood that travel to the ultrasound-targeted tissue then pop, causing small tears of the blood-brain barrier. The ruptures allow biomarkers, such as DNA, RNA and proteins, from the tumor to pass through the blood-brain barrier and release into the blood, which can be tested with a blood draw, called a liquid biopsy.

Department of Biomedical Engineering

5

Research news

6

WashU-developed holograms help physicians during cardiac procedure

Physics, AI help researchers to better define tumor boundaries in imaging

Collaboration lets researchers ‘read’ proteins for new properties

Jennifer N. Avari Silva, MD, associate professor of pediatrics at the School of Medicine, and Jonathan Silva, associate professor of biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, co-led a team that tested a Microsoft HoloLens headset with custom software during cardiac ablation procedures on patients at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

Results of the trial were published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology – Clinical Electrophysiology July 2020, International Conference on Human Computer Interaction July 10, 2020 and IEEE Journal of Translational Engineering in Health and Medicine, July 3, 2020.

In an ablation procedure using existing technology, known as electroanatomic mapping system (EAMS), a technician controls the catheters while the physician views the images on monitors presented in two different planes.

The physician then has to mentally create the image of the heart.

Jennifer Silva, also director of pediatric electrophysiology at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, said that standard-of-care technology is antiquated, and the team believed it could do better.

Abhinav Jha, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and collaborators at Johns Hopkins University, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the University of British Columbia combined their expertise in physics, imaging and machine learning to improve delineation of lung tumors in PET scans. Results are published online in Physics in Medicine & Biology.

“In the clinic, there is a need for methods to delineate the tumor boundary for PET-based radiotherapy planning,” said Jha, who also is an assistant professor of radiology at WashU’s School of Medicine. “Tumor delineation is also needed, and in radiomics where we extract features from the image and use these features to see if the patient has a better chance of responding to treatment or has a better chance of surviving.”

“Our method is more accurate and able to delineate tumors as small as 1.7 centimeters square,” Jha said. “Further, the method required a small number of clinical images for training. We were able to test if our method is able to generalize across different scanners, and we found that it does.

Clumps of proteins inside cells are a common thread in many neurodegenerative diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease. These clumps, or solid aggregates of proteins, appear to be the result of an abnormality in the process known as liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS), in which individual proteins come together to form a liquid-like droplet.

To understand how the process goes awry, researchers need a better understanding of the mechanism that drives LLPS in the first place. What is it about any protein that would cause it to condense into a liquid?

Collaborative research between the Pappu Lab, led by Professor Rohit Pappu, and the lab of Tanja Mittag at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has uncovered the key to translating the patterns written into specific types of protein sequences that contribute to LLPS. Importantly, they also have uncovered how specific arrangements of amino acids, which stray from the pattern, can negatively impact phase separation and give rise to the formation of solid aggregates instead of liquids.

McKelvey School of Engineering

Outside the classroom

Select student groups » Association of Graduate Students (AGES) » Association of Black Biomedical Graduate Students (ABBGS) » The Association for Women in Science (AWIS) » Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES)

st. lo u i s i s t he

No. 2

rising city f or sta rt u ps (Forbes, 2018)

WashU and St. Louis resources and accelerators: » Arch Grants

» Biomedical Engineering Doctoral Student Council (BMEDC)

» Cambridge Innovation Center St. Louis

» Future Educators

» Cortex Innovation Community

» Graduate Student Senate

» Acera Surgical Inc. » datadog health » Encodia Inc. » Epharmix

» Biotechnology and Life Science Advising Group (BALSA)

» Graduate Association of Latin American Students (GALAS)

Select startups with ties to WashU BME:

» Exegy » Geneoscopy » Mindset » NeuroLutions » SentiAR Inc. » Sparo Labs » Sympel Theraputics

» Office of Technology Management

» National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)

» Skandalaris Center​for Interdisciplinary Innovation & Entrepreneurship

» OUTgrads

» Sling Health Network

» ProSPER

» T-Rex Technology Incubator

» Sling Health

» Venture Cafe

» Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) » Society of Women Engineers (SWE)

Department of Biomedical Engineering

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Faculty awards & honors Chen receives early career award for research in therapeutic ultrasound

BME faculty take part in national COVID-19 research

Nate Huebsch and Jon Silva

Michael Vahey and Rohit Pappu

The Huebsch and Silva laboratories are collaborating with physicians at the Washington University School of Medicine to identify patients who are at risk for fatal arrhythmia from COVID-19 therapy.

Their approach relies on modeling the heart with micro-tissues, understanding what combinations of drugs are dangerous in these tissues, and creating an algorithm to predict patient outcomes.

The approach will be tested against data from a clinical study of hospitalized patients whose heartbeats are recorded by a wearable ECG monitor.

Michael Vahey, assistant professor, and Rohit Pappu, the Edwin H. Murty Professor of Engineering, have joined forces to characterize how particles of SARSCoV-2, the novel coronavirus circulating worldwide, interact with the human version of angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2), the host cell receptor responsible for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Through a series of experiments and simulation, they will obtain quantitative assessments of how the virus particles attach to the receptors via their spike proteins and how long they stay attached.

In addition, they will measure the number of ACE-2 receptors the virus particle interacts with on the surface of a cell. Their work is funded by a one-year, $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for work specifically related to COVID-19.

Vahey and Pappu are also working with Srikanth Singamaneni, professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, to leverage the results from their studies to functionalize model surfaces using peptides derived from the human ACE-2 receptor. The goal is to develop peptide-based sensors that can be used to detect SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces. Vahey, Singamaneni and Pappu work jointly under the auspices of the Center for Science & Engineering of Living Systems (CSELS), an interdisciplinary center funded by the McKelvey Engineering.

Jai Rudra The average age of patients who died of SARS-CoV-2 is 20 years greater than that for people who tested positive, in agreement with published data for age-related mortality worldwide. Aging is characterized by an age-related immune dysfunction and associated chronic age-related inflammation. Vaccine adjuvants used to boost the systems response to vaccination may produce excess inflammation in older adults that obstructs the immune response and vaccine outcomes. The Rudra lab is engineering supramolecular nanomaterials as inflammation free vaccines for the elderly aimed at generating lung tissueresident immunity against SARS-CoV-2.

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McKelvey School of Engineering

Hong Chen, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and of radiation oncology at the School of Medicine, has been selected to receive the 2020 Frederic Lizzi Early Career Award from the International Society of Therapeutic Ultrasound. The award recognizes individuals early in their professional career who have contributed substantially to the advancement of therapeutic ultrasound.

Taber receives 2020 Lissner award from ASME Larry Taber, senior professor of biomedical engineering, has been named the recipient of the 2020 H.R. Lissner Medal by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

The Lissner Medal recognizes outstanding achievements in the field of bioengineering, including research contributions, bioengineering innovations or educational impact.

It is the highest honor in the ASME’s bioengineering division.

BME faculty win 2020 Spring LEAP funding Two faculty members have been selected to receive funding from the 2020 spring cycle of the Leadership and Entrepreneurial Acceleration Program (LEAP).

Dan Moran, professor of biomedical engineering, and Eric Leuthardt, MD, professor of neurological surgery and of biomedical engineering, formed one of six teams to receive assistance to prepare their project for commercialization. Their project, Sympel, is a neuromodulation electrode system that can be placed near the spine to address complicated diseases.

Student news Help with the push of a button It’s a simple question: How can institutions provide help for people considering suicide?

For Evin Jaff, a first-year student majoring in biomedical engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, the solution arrived the way many things do nowadays: through Amazon.

After losing a friend to suicide in his sophomore year of high school, he wanted to design a solution that could help prevent future deaths. He’d noticed within his own community that teens had a need for proper mental health resources but weren’t taking advantage of offered services. Inspired by Amazon’s Dash button technology, Jaff developed a product that connects at-risk individuals with the resources they need with the push of a button.

And while his original motivation was suicide prevention, he soon realized that his device could help many more.

“I came in with a very specific idea of suicide prevention, because that’s hit closest to me,” Jaff said. “But when I thought it through, I realized it’s really just about getting help. People need help for a lot of different reasons, and you can have a button that does that all in one.”

The device uses an API provided by Twilio, a cloud communications service, to connect callers with a resource hotline. Currently, the button acts as an intermediary; when callers press the button, it uses what Jaff calls “server magic” to call their phone from the hotline, similar to teleconferencing services. Once the two calls are live, the service unites them.

Juniors Eisner, Klapow awarded prestigious Truman Scholarship Roommates and best friends Zach Eisner and Max Klapow, juniors at Washington University in St. Louis, have both won a Truman Scholarship, the premier graduate fellowship in the United States for those pursuing careers as public service leaders. Both Eisner and Klapow will receive $30,000 for graduate study.

Eisner and Klapow are two of 62 scholars selected from a competitive field of 773 applicants. For one institution to boast two winners is rare. For those two winners to be best friends is remarkable.

Eisner, a biomedical engineering major in the McKelvey School of Engineering, and Klapow, a major in Arts & Sciences, were surprised with the news April 13. The students logged on to Zoom expecting an update on their applications from Grizelda McClelland, assistant dean in Arts & Sciences.

Instead, Chancellor Andrew D. Martin popped onto their screens.

BME student wins prestigious award at SPIE Photonics West Guang Yang, a doctoral student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, received the 2020 MKS Instrument Research Excellence Award at the 2020 Photonics West conference.

Yang was recognized for his research achievements in photoacoustic imaging and was one of only 18 students selected to receive the award.

BME senior design demos go virtual

Instead of taking part in face-to-face presentations on campus, teams produced videos demonstrating their projects that were judged by business and engineering leaders.

“The one positive was that the virtual design competition allowed for individuals around the world to judge the projects,” said Klaesner, also a professor of physical therapy at the School of Medicine. “The furthest judge participating was in Korea.”

The winning project, titled “Detection of Post-Operative Infection and Edema,” was designed by Adler, Gaby Altman and Anisha Shah, and features a wearable device designed to detect post-operative infection in patients.

“The device helps nurses and physicians stay informed in real-time about a patient’s recovery after surgery,” Shah said. “Not only would this cut down the amount of time that hospital staff spend checking patients’ vitals, but it allows them to keep track of recovery after a patient is discharged.”

Department of Biomedical Engineering

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Biomedical Engineering Faculty

Dennis Barbour Associate Professor and Director of Master’s Studies dbarbour@wustl.edu

Hong Chen Assistant Professor hongchen@wustl.edu

Jianmin Cui Professor jcui@wustl.edu

Research interests: Ultrasound imaging; ultrasound therapy; imageguided ultrasound drug delivery (IGUDD)

Research interests: Molecular basis of bioelectricity and related diseases in nervous and cardiovascular systems; ion channel function and modulation; discovery of drugs that target ion channels; electrophysiology; fluorescence measurements, molecular biology, biophysics

Research interests: Photoacoustic technologies for high resolution, structural, functional, metabolic and molecular imaging in vivo and their applications in research of a variety of diseases, such as neurovascular disorders, cancer, wound healing and cardiovascular diseases

Princess Imoukhuede Associate Professor imoukhuede@wustl.edu

Abhinav Jha Assistant Professor a.jha@wustl.edu

Research interests: Pioneers quantitative biological measurements and computational biological models to delineate ligandreceptor binding, receptor and effector phosphorylation, and sprouting angiogenic hallmarks in disease processes

Research interests: Medical imaging systems and algorithms for optimized performance in clinical tasks using quantitative measures of task performance

Daniel Moran Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies dmoran@wustl.edu

Rohit Pappu Edwin H. Murty Professor of Engineering pappu@wustl.edu

Research interests: Motor control; braincomputer interfaces

Research interests: Protein aggregation and its effects on neurodegeneration; biophysics of intrinsically disordered proteins; proteinnucleic acid interactions and modeling of transcriptional regulation; phase transitions in cell biology

Research interests: Auditory processing, cognitive neuroscience, machine learning and medical diagnostics

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McKelvey School of Engineering

Song Hu Associate Professor

Nathaniel Huebsch Assistant Professor nhuebsch@wustl.edu Research interests: Basic and translational stem cell mechanobiology, with specific focus on hydrogels to control cell-mediated tissue repair, and 3-D heart-on-a-chip models derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells

Barani Raman Professor barani@wustl.edu Research interests: Computational and systems neuroscience; neuromorphic engineering; pattern recognition; sensorbased machine olfaction, and bio-robotics

Jai Rudra Assistant Professor srudra22@wustl.edu

Alexandra Rutz Assistant Professor Starts March 2021

Research interests: Design and synthesis of amyloid-inspired supramolecular biomaterials for applications in vaccine development and immunotherapy. His research has been supported by multiple awards from the NIH

Research interests: Engineering of electronic tissues using materials design and fabrication-based approaches. Our goal is to achieve robust biointerfaces and long-lived function in bioelectronics and other medical devices.

Jin-Yu Shao Associate Professor and Director of Doctoral Studies shao@wustl.edu

Jonathan Silva Associate Professor and Director of Diversity for BME jonsilva@wustl.edu

Research interests: Cellular and molecular biomechanics; proteinprotein interactions, mathematical modeling of biological processes

Research interests: Virtual and augmented reality; Electrophysiology; Molecular spectroscopy; Mathematical modeling; Cardiac arrhythmia

Quing Zhu Professor zhu.q@wustl.edu Research interests: Cancer detection and diagnosis, cancer treatment assessment and prediction utilizing diffused optical tomography, photoacoustic tomography, optical coherence tomography and ultrasound

Joseph Klaesner Professor of Physical Therapy & Biomedical Engineering Instructor of Senior Capstone Design klaesnerjw@wustl.edu

Yoram Rudy Fred Saigh Distinguished Professor of Engineering rudy@wustl.edu Research interests: Cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmias; molecular dynamics of ion channels; computational biology and mathematical modeling; imaging and mapping of cardiac electrical activity

Ismael SeĂĄĂąez Assistant Professor Starts March 2021 Research interests: Use of body-machine interfaces (BoMIs) to provide a higher level of control for existing assistive devices and neuroprosthetics, and to improve motor function through rehabilitation.

Lori Setton Department Chair and Lucy & Stanley Lopata Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering setton@wustl.edu Research interests: Mechanobiology of osteoarthritis and intervertebral disc disorders, tissue regeneration and drug delivery in musculoskeletal disease

Kurt Thoroughman Associate Professor thoroughman@wustl.edu

Michael Vahey Assistant Professor mvahey@wustl.edu

Chao Zhou Associate Professor chaozhou@wustl.edu

Research interests: Science and engineering education; human motor control and learning; computational neuroscience

Research interests: Developing imaging methods and microfluidic technologies to understand infectious diseases, with an emphasis on studying how viruses such as influenza A navigate and shape their hosts in order to replicate

Research interests: Optical coherence tomography, a growing technology used to perform high-resolution crosssectional imaging using light

Katie Schreiber Lecturer khschreiber@wustl.edu

Patricia Widder Senior Lecturer and Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies pwidder9876@wustl.edu

Department of Biomedical Engineering

11

WashU BME outcomes

t o p co m p ani e s :

What do recent BS graduates do after graduation?

Accenture bioMérieux Cellatrix LLC Epic

38%

Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc. General Dynamics

entered the wo rkfo rce

3%

vo lu n t e e r , ot he r

23%

Abbott

Landauer Medical Physics Medline Industries Inc.

36% co nti nu i ng edu cat i on

internship, co -o p, research

MilliporeSigma Shumaker & Sieffert PA Smiths Medical St. Jude Medical Inc. Teach For America ZS Associates t o p gradu at e s cho o l s : Columbia University

Salary ranges among the full-time positions who reported starting salary:

Johns Hopkins University Massachusetts Institute of Technology

$30-$40K — 14%

New York University

$50-$60K — 29%

Northwestern University Ohio State University

$70-$80K — 29%

Tufts University

$80-$100K — 29%

University of California, Los Angeles University of California, San Diego University of Illinois at Chicago

Leadership

University of Iowa University of North Carolina

Lori Setton Department Chair and Lucy & Stanley Lopata Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering setton@wustl.edu

University of Pennsylvania UT Southwestern Vanderbilt University Washington University in St. Louis

Department of Biomedical Engineering bme.wustl.edu • #WashUengineers • @WashUBME