FROM THE CHAIR
We are fortunate to be located in Orange County, the world’s medical device capital. Here, the life sciences industry employs more than 164,000 people and accounts for more than $35.3 billion in annual economic activity over the biotech, pharmaceuticals and medical device manufacturing sectors. By nature, this industry is risk averse, and innovation generally is not a high priority. Here at UCI, we are eager to change this, as advancing health care is a serious calling and an urgent business that deserves our utmost talent and dedication. Working with our industry and medical partners, we seek to inspire the minds of our young biomedical engineers to make health care more accessible and more personal, not just for the wealthy few but for all of the world’s citizens. In this newsletter, you will read two stories focused on how our faculty and students are establishing partnerships with companies to develop biomedical technologies and more quickly accelerate the move from lab to product. We are building a department with people who will take on this responsibility and tackle the hard problems head on. In the last year, we have added two stellar faculty members: Christine King and Daryl Preece. King, our very own Ph.D. graduate, completed a postdoc in neurology and was research manager at the PRISMS (Pediatric Research Integrating Sensor Monitoring Systems) at UCLA. She is our first assistant professor of teaching, and has already made an impact on the quality of our curriculum by introducing innovative pedagogical methods of learning. Preece earned a Ph.D. at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. His research utilizes focused light sources to study subcellular movements and forces. Preece was named a Spark Fellow by the BLI Foundation and worked
at UCSD before joining us. Congratulations to professors Anna Grosberg, who was promoted to associate professor with tenure; and Bernard Choi and Elliot Botvinick, both of whom were promoted to full professors! Our faculty members continue to rack up accolades in recognition of their contributions to the field. Kyriacos Athanasiou won the Savio L-Y. Woo Translational Biomechanics Medal, Enrico Gratton won the prestigious Avanti Award in Lipids for his contribution to biophysics, and Bruce Tromberg was named the 2018 Mentor of the Year by UCI’s Institute for Clinical and Translational Science. Our faculty also ensures that our research remains at the forefront, earning robust government funding (NIH, NSF, etc.) to fight debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes. Eight of our graduate students received competitive fellowships, including four who won the coveted NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Finally, with mixed emotions, we bid farewell to our dear colleague Bruce Tromberg, a member of UCI for 30 years, who was named the next director of the NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. Bruce is a dear friend, a giant in the field of biophotonics, a founding faculty member of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and a leader at UCI, in Orange County and beyond. We will miss him greatly, but we are proud to send him off to lead the nation’s preeminent research and funding agency for biomedical engineering research. This newsletter is about the people we cherish at UCI BME: their stories, their aspirations, their visions and their accomplishments. Please read on for all the details. Sincerely, Abe Lee William J. Link Professor and Chair Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Irvine