Growth Factors Bioengineering AT ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN | Fall 2015 2015 | Annual magazine of the Department of Bioengineering Growth Factors University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign CONTENTS 2 Department Head’s Message 4 New College. New Medicine. 6 Numbers: Bioengineering Students 7 Student profiles 12 New degree program fosters industry-ready grads 14 Faculty profiles 21 At a Glance: Bioengineering Grad Students 22 The Rejuvenation of Everitt Lab 24 Accredited Undergraduate Program 25 Interdisciplinary Graduate Program 26 Alumni profiles 34 Alumni Careers: Illinois Bioengineers 35 Research Highlights 40 Drive Your Vision at Illinois Department of Bioengineering UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN Engineering For Life Bioengineering at Illinois: Excited about a future that includes the new engineering-based College of Medicine Rashid Bashir Head, Dear Colleagues and Friends, Department of Welcome to the 2015 edition of the Bioengineering annual magazine from Bioengineering the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It marks another year of excitement and growth for our department, including many important milestones and events that make us even more hopeful and excited about the future. In September 2014 we held the Frontiers in Bioengineering Symposium on our campus, which featured presentations from more than 30 world leaders in bioengineering and more than 30 bioengineering assistant professors from around the United States. Distinguished bioengineering pioneers speaking at the event included Prof. Shu Chien from the University of California, San Diego; Dr. Roderic Pettigrew, Director of NIBIB at the National Institutes of Health; Prof. Bob Nerem from the Georgia Institute of Technology; former U.S. Secretary of Energy, Prof. Steven Chu from Stanford University; Prof. John Rogers and Prof. Klaus Schulten from Illinois, and many others. The future of bioengineering research and the intersection of engineering, medicine, and biology were discussed by the speakers and attendees, and a followup perspective was published in the April 2015 issue of Science Translational Medicine. Our staff and faculty have been working on completing the design for the renovation of Everitt Lab, which will become the academic home of the Department of Bioengineering. The project is approved at $55 million, and renovation is scheduled to begin in January 2016 and be completed in 2018. We are very thankful to the Grainger Foundation, Jump Trading, our college and campus for providing initial funding for the building. The 124,000- square-foot building will be home to more than 20 faculty initially and will have state-of-the-art active learning classrooms, wet labs, a vivarium, and a computational research hub. 2 DEPARTMENT OF BIOENGINEERING | GROWTH FACTORS DEPARTMENT HEAD’S MESSAGE Significantly, the building also will house an innovative medical simulation and education center for our newly approved engineering-based College of Medicine. The simulation facility will allow for novel integration of engineering students and medical students in classes and projects. And, as mentioned earlier, the new engineering-based Carle Illinois College of Medicine at Illinois is moving forward. The University of Illinois Board of Trustees approved the proposal at their March 2015 meeting. This novel initiative is based on the premise that the future of medical practice and education must integrate engineering and technology in the new curriculum as much as biological sciences and clinical sciences play a role in today’s curriculum. Grounded in compassion and care, the physicians of tomorrow must be imbued with engineering, biology, and clinical sciences knowledge and experience as they work to meet the grand challenges of health care. Providing higher-quality healthcare to more people at lower cost will require all disciplines to come together to address it. Just as bioengineering curricula have evolved during the last 30 years by fusing engineering and biology, the medical curricula must evolve to integrate engineering and quantitative principles. It is an exciting and opportune time for Bioengineering at Illinois to play a lead role in this crucial endeavor. With three more of our faculty honored with named professorships, Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering Brian Cunningham, Founder Professor Jun Song, and Founder Professor Tandy Warnow, these and other esteemed colleagues continue to earn campus and national awards and increase our visibility and impact. Our students amaze me with their accomplishments, honors and awards, creativity and hard work. Members of the Spring 2015 graduating class went on to graduate school at MIT, UCSD, Georgia Tech, Illinois, and in the UK; several went on to their top choice of medical schools; and many entered industry and service. I have no doubt that they will keep making us proud. Our plan is to continue to grow the department, and we are actively recruiting senior faculty in bioengineering, with support enabled by the generous gift from the Grainger Foundation for endowed professorships. We also continue to be one of the most selective department on campus, welcoming 66 new undergraduate students in Fall 2015 from more than 1,000 applicants. Our excellent academic and professional staff keep the departmental engines running and help us do all that we do, and I am deeply appreciative of their hard work. It has been my pleasure and honor to serve as the department head during the past year, working with our excellent students, staff and faculty, whose commitment to quality and excellence is unmatched. We all look forward to making an even greater impact on human health and quantitative biology and anticipate an exciting future! Best regards, Rashid Bashir Abel Bliss Professor in the College of Engineering Professor of Bioengineering Bioengineering Department Head 2015 | UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 3 University of Illinois creates new engineering-focused College of Medicine A group of faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have a new vision for medical education that will leverage Illinois’ strengths in engineering, particularly bioengineering. “Traditional medical education involves the intersection of the biological sciences and the clinical sciences,” said Rashid Bashir, Abel Bliss Professor of Engineering and Bioengineering department head. “Engineering as the third circle of the Venn diagram has been missing.” Typically as technology increases, costs decrease, but medical care is the exception. It currently consumes 18 percent of the U.S. GDP and is predicted to continue to rise. It’s a situation that is unsustainable, according to Bashir, and he sees bioengineering as the key to “optimizing a very complex problem.” Bashir and colleagues developed this vision several years ago. They realized that advances in fields like genomics, big data, sensors and imaging meant these technologies could be increasingly integrated into medical care. “How do you use big data in health care? How do you use telemedicine to transform the delivery of medicine?” asks Normand Paquin, associate director for research at the UI Coordinated Science Laboratory. “These aspects are perfectly aligned to the bioengineering wheelhouse in terms of the types of innovation to look at.” Guided by the faculty vision, the University and Carle Health System have embarked on an exciting new educational effort to teach a new type of medical doctor by incorporating engineering principles into the curriculum. The new, proposed Carle Illinois College of Medicine is scheduled to open its doors in Fall 2018. Paquin, a leader of the COM project, says the Department of Bioengineering is a “linchpin” in the development of the new college. “We have a tremendous Department of Bioengineering that has risen through the rankings very fast, has strong leadership and committed individuals,” he said. “The notion of infusing engineering into medicine has some very imaginative and creative roots in the Department of Bioengineering.” The ability to share a “language” and understand other academic cultures is a key component of the new COM. Bashir said the idea is to supplement medical education with engineering and work closely with biologists and clinicians to come up with a new, engineering-driven medical curriculum. 4 DEPARTMENT OF BIOENGINEERING | GROWTH FACTORS For example, instead of using traditional epidemiology models, we can study models of systems and emergent behaviors from populations leading to decision making and risk analysis, said Jennifer Amos, teaching associate professor in Bioengineering. In the case of learning imaging principles, students will use examples of histology (tissue imaging at the microscopic level). Traditional anatomy and physiology, likewise, will be supplemented with engineering principles. Not surprisingly, this is an enormous undertaking. It’s taken several years to get campus approvals and begin the search for a dean, which is now under way. Next comes developing the curriculum, getting accredited by both the national Liaison Committee on Medical Education and the Illinois Board of Higher Education, and then recruiting students. Energetic fund raising also is taking place in the background of all this activity. Carle Health System has pledged $100 million, and the Urbana campus’ target is to raise at least $135 million in private-sector support. “What we’re thinking of doing is very difficult,” acknowledges Paquin. “Our hope is that we will become