Dear Bioengineering Community,

It is my pleasure to share with you the Department of Bioengineering’s Fall 2025 Newsletter. Our department continues to thrive across education, research, and innovation, thanks to the collective contributions of our students, staff, faculty, alumni, and partners.

Our academic programs remain strong and vibrant. Our Fall 2025 enrollment included 303 undergraduate students (sophomores, juniors, and seniors) and 232 graduate students (178 PhD and 54 MS). We awarded 97 undergraduate and 56 graduate degrees (26 PhD and 29 MS), and our students continue to “drive their own bus,” taking ownership of their academic and professional journeys. For example, 21 of our undergraduate students presented at the BMES Annual Conference in San Diego, and 31.5% of our PhD students held individual predoctoral fellowships from federal and private funding sources in FY25. In addition, our research enterprise continues to expand and make meaningful impact — during FY25, we received $44.2M in new grant awards and had $23.4M in annual research expenditures.

The innovation nurtured within our department, driven by our commitment to groundbreaking research in our laboratories and our MS in Medical Product Engineering (MS- MPE) program, has led to impactful products and the formation of successful startup companies by our faculty and alumni. Some of these ventures featured in this issue (Respair, Inc., Aneurisk, Inc., Swan NeuroTech, and Renerva, Inc.) underscore how ideas sparked in our classrooms and laboratories are translating into real-world technologies that improve patient care and strengthen our regional biomedical innovation ecosystem.

You will also find stories in this issue that showcase the breadth of our department’s work and accomplishments: advances in neural engineering, biomechanics, biomaterials, and regenerative medicine; faculty and student awards; impactful student fellowships and publications; and alumni and industry partnerships making a difference regionally and globally. These stories are a testament to the creativity, rigor, and collaborative spirit that define Pitt Bioengineering.

As always, I encourage you to stay connected. Join our Bioengineering online yearbook, follow our social media channels, and let us know how you would like to remain engaged with the department. Your perspectives and experiences are invaluable to our students and faculty and to our educational, research, and community engagement missions. I remain inspired by the accomplishments of our talented community, and I look forward to another year of learning, discovery, innovation, and collaboration.

Sincerely,
Sanjeev G. Shroff, PhD
Chair, Department of Bioengineering
Distinguished Professor of and McGinnis Chair in Bioengineering
Professor of Medicine