NIH-NSF BBSI: BioMEMS Summer Bioengineering Institute at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)

PROPOSAL NO.: 0234132

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: William Hunter

INSTITUTION NAME: NJIT

TITLE: NIH-NSF BBSI BioMEMS Summer Bioengineering Institute

ABSTRACT

The Department of Biomedical Engineering at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) proposes to develop a four year BioMEMS Summer Bioengineering Institute in response to the call for bioengineering/bioinformatics summer institutes by NSF/NIH (NSF-02-019). The first Institute would be held over 10 weeks in the summer of 2003.

The focus on BioMEMS will be supported by both didactic and research experiences planned for the students. The capstone research experience will be fabricating a BioMEMS device in the Class-10 Cleanroom of the Microelectronics Facility at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The students will also test the biological/medical application of their device in a host biomedical research lab either in the University Heights academic community, the metropolitan New York community (an easy commute) or at their home university. Prior to testing their device, students will also have worked extensively during the summer with their host biomedical research lab, so that they have a thorough understanding of the biomedical problem for which their device is intended. The students' more general understanding of the sort of biomedical research questions that are currently being addressed using BioMEMS will be broadened by weekly state-of-the-art research seminars given by experts in the field.

The students' research experience will be complemented by four formal courses that they will complete. One course will survey the field of BioMEMS. The others will be the three courses that form the core curriculum in biomedical engineering at NJIT. Two of these provide a general introduction to the field of biomedical engineering: BME 301 focuses on bioelectrical signals, physiologic modeling, and imaging; BME 302 focuses on biomechanics, tissue engineering, and biomaterials. The third core course, BME 303, focuses on the essentials of biochemistry and cell biology from an engineering point of view. Instead of being drab lectures, all of these courses use the studio style of presentation that encourages active student involvement in the learning process