New Biomedical Engineering Program Created

A $3 million award from the Whitaker Foundation will help fund a new undergraduate biomedical engineering program built on a collaboration between The University of Texas at Austin, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has approved a new biomedical engineering department and undergraduate program, which joins the expertise of the engineering program at UT-Austin with the medical experience of researchers in the Texas Medical Center.

"What this means for the biomedical engineering student in Austin is access to Texas Medical Center physicians and their clinics, laboratories and operating rooms," said Kenneth Diller, Ph.D., chair of the new UT-Austin department. "These engineering students will get to test their technology ‘in the field’ and actually experience patient and physician reactions – it’s a high-tech, high-touch education."

For Texas Medical Center doctors, this new program means access to the students who are researching and developing new engineering solutions for medical problems.

"We are in the midst of a revolution in medical science. Molecular biology is changing the way we think about disease – from personalized genetic and metabolic profiling to gene therapy and tissue engineering," Michele Follen, M.D., Ph.D., professor of gynecologic oncology at M.D. Anderson and director of the Biomedical Engineering Center at the Texas Medical Center.

While the program opens up exciting new areas of research cooperation between Austin and Houston, it also will train a new generation of undergraduates and graduate students to provide innovative solutions that physicians and patients need at the bedside, said Dianna Milewicz, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of internal medicine at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston and director of the M.D./Ph.D. program offered through UT-Houston and M.D. Anderson.

Milewicz is co-director of the Biomedical Engineering Center along with Charles Patrick, Ph.D., associate professor of plastic surgery research at M.D. Anderson, who specializes in molecular tissue engineering.

"The advent of molecular-based disease detection and therapeutic technologies is already transforming the practice of medicine," Milewicz said. "But the growth of molecular medicine and its clinical translation depends on the availability of professionals with expertise in both engineering design and biological principles."

The program will offer three specialization tracks: imaging and instrumentation; cellular, tissue, and biomolecular engineering; and computational biomedical engineering. Faculty from both Austin and Houston will teach the courses, and students will have the opportunity to pursue clinical and research internships and senior design projects in the Texas Medical Center.

In addition, future students will have access to the 64-acre Southeast Texas BioTechnology Park under development next to the Texas Medical Center. The $633 million medical research complex will support new biotech ventures and spin-off products developed in the TMC, NASA and area research universities. M.D. Anderson began construction on the park’s first research building earlier this year.

UT-Austin will begin enrolling students for the new department of biomedical engineering this fall, with a target enrollment of 500 students by 2006.

Eighteen new faculty members will be recruited over a 5-year period, including 12 at UT-Austin and six within the senior faculty at the participating Texas Medical Center institutions.

E-Mail: tmcinfo@texmedctr.tmc.edu
URL: http://www.tmc.edu/tmcnews/08_01_02/page_19.html