Dear Pitt Bioengineering Family,
On behalf of our faculty, staff, and students, I am pleased to present the Department of Bioengineering’s Fall 2024 e-Newsletter.
After completing the two-year tenure as the Interim Dean of the Swanson School of Engineering, I am delighted to return home. Together, we have had significant accomplishments during the last two years with respect to our teaching, research, and professional and community service missions—I thank all of you and the entire Swanson School community for the tremendous support. I have agreed to resume my position as the Chair of the Department of Bioengineering. I would like to thank Mark Redfern for his outstanding leadership as the Interim Chair for the past two years; one can readily see the positive impact of his efforts. I am also excited to welcome Michele V. Manuel as U.S. Steel Dean of Engineering at the Swanson School, and I cannot wait to see how her leadership continues to inspire excellence in everything we do.
The Department of Bioengineering continues to excel on all fronts. Our undergraduate and graduate programs continue to flourish, with 345 undergraduate (sophomore + junior + senior) and 234 graduate (164 PhD, 2 MD/PhD, 3 DPT/PhD, and 65 MS) students enrolled during the past academic year (AY-24). We awarded 101 undergraduate and 52 graduate (20 PhD and 32 MS) degrees in AY-2024. I am most proud of our students’ desire to “drive their own bus” – to be actively involved in their own education. For example, 37 undergraduate students will be presenting at the BMES Annual conference in Baltimore this year (October 2024). Similarly, 51 (30.2 %) of our 169 PhD students currently have individual predoctoral fellowships from federal and private sources.
Pitt bioengineers continue to perform impactful research, contributing to the generation of new knowledge and development of novel medical technologies for improving healthcare. One such bioengineer is Ramakrishna Mukkamala, whose impactful research in cardiovascular health technology has led to the development of a novel smartphone app that detects blood pressure using a smartphone- no cuff required. Similar exceptional research stories on smartphone-based biotechnology, neural engineering, and cancer research can be found in this newsletter. As the last academic year (AY-24) has ended, I would like to highlight some other extraordinary accomplishments from our community during that year. In January 2024, William Wagner, a recognized expert in the areas of biomaterials and tissue/organ engineering, joined us as the Distinguished Professor of Bioengineering, moving his primary faculty appointment from the School of Medicine (Department of Surgery) to the Swanson School of Engineering (Department of Bioengineering). Ioannis Zervantonakis was the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award to continue his groundbreaking cancer-related research and the 2024 BMES-CMBE Rising Star Junior Faculty Award. Prashant Kumta was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors in recognition of his contributions to functional nano-scale materials for hard and soft tissue engineering and for energy storage and conversion. Tamer Ibrahim was inducted into the 2024 AIMBE College of Fellows in recognition of his breakthrough technical innovations in ultrahigh field MRI and their impact on neuroimaging research. Harvey Borovetz was the recipient of the inaugural Vishnu Ingle Lifetime Achievement Award from ASAIO for his contributions to the development of artificial organs. FY-24 was a banner year for the Department of Bioengineering research portfolio, with all-time highs in new grant awards and annual research expenditures: $41.1 M in new grant awards (an increase of 83% since FY-21) and $22.3 M in annual research expenditures (an increase of 62% since FY-21).
The Department of Bioengineering is proud to host four interdisciplinary NIH predoctoral training grants (NIH T-32 awards): Cellular Approaches to Tissue Engineering and Regeneration, CATER (PI: Monga, Co-Director: Wagner, active since 2003), Biomechanics in Regenerative Medicine, BiRM (PI: Vorp, Co-Director: Cook, active since 2005), Cardiovascular Bioengineering Training Program, CBTP (PI: Shroff, Co-Director: Chan, active since 2005) and Bioengineering in Psychiatry Training Program, BiP (PI: Ibrahim, Co-Director: Aizenstein, active since 2019). During AY-24, CBTP and BiRM training grants were competitively renewed for five years (Years 16-20). We teamed up with the School of Medicine and the Royal College of Surgeons Ireland (RCSI) to create a joint PhD program in Precision Medicine. I am delighted to report that the undergraduate program was re-accredited during the Fall 2023 ABET site visit with only strengths and no deficiencies, warnings, or concerns. We are now embarking on a rigorous review of our undergraduate curriculum, including benchmarking with other peer and aspirational bioengineering programs, to optimize curricular structure, course topics and content, and experiential learning opportunities. We welcomed Kurt Beschorner into a new role as Associate Chair of Graduate Education, Carsten Stuckenholz as Director of Undergraduate Education, and Pratap Khanwilkar as Director of Master's Programs. I would like to thank our fantastic staff who contribute significantly to our success and keep the department running smoothly each day.
DEI-related efforts and community and alumni engagement continue to be important focus areas for us. Within the school, our faculty are leading outstanding programs, including Pitt STRIVE-a program that has now graduated 29 underrepresented PhDs since its inception in 2017, including 10 from the Department of Bioengineering, with another 9 students from Bioengineering in the pipeline. We continue to offer outreach in the form of CampBioE 2.0 (directed by Dr. Katrina Knight), the LEAD Program (directed by Dr. Steven Abramowitch, and afterschool courses (BioBots) offered by our BMES chapter in collaboration with the Hill District Community Engagement Center. We continue to engage our alumni to connect them with our current students (e.g., serve as mentors and/or provide internship/co-ops/job opportunities) and to contribute to our teaching mission, especially at the MS level. We had a major celebration on campus with alumni and friends on November 2-3, 2024 to mark the 25th anniversary of the Department of Bioengineering.
Lastly, we have an exciting calendar of events planned for the Fall-2024 semester. Most importantly, many of our students, faculty and staff are attending the annual Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) meeting in Baltimore (October 23-26, 2024). Every year we host our Pitt “BioE Bash” reception at this meeting, which is a great opportunity for our students, faculty, and staff to interact with prospective students and colleagues from other institutions. This year, we are inviting our alumni and friends in the greater Baltimore area to join us at our reception on October 24, 2024. To our alumni – If you are curious about what your former classmates are up to or who else is in the area, we encourage you to add your information to our yearbook and tell us how you’d like to be involved with our department. I continue to be impressed by the individual and collective accomplishments of our talented group of Pitt bioengineers, and I look forward to sharing their future successes with you.
Sincerely,
Sanjeev Shroff, PhD
Chair, Department of Bioengineering
Distinguished Professor of and McGinnis Chair in Bioengineering
Swanson School of Engineering, University of Pittsburgh
