Biomedical Engineering Symposium Columbia-UC

March 13, 2017

A delegation of nine faculty members, scientists and students from Columbia visited Chile in mid-March to participate in a PGIF-funded "Biomedical Engineering Symposium", organized by the Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering at Universidad Catolica (UC) in conjunction with the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia. They met with the UC’s Dean of Engineering, Juan Carlos de la Llera, to discuss the potentials of the current alliance between both institutions and well as future joint-projects. In addition they participated in several workshops with Pedro Bouchon, academic director of the project Engineering 2030 and current Vice-Provost in charge of Research, and Pablo Irarrázaval, director of the Institute of UC’s Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering. Among the topics discussed at the Symposium were biomaterials, bioimaging and biomechanics. 

Among the participants from Columbia University were:

• Clark Hung, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department's Undergraduate Affairs Committee at Columbia. His area of research is focused on the effects of physical, mechanical, and chemical stimuli on musculoskeletal cells related to cellular and functional tissue engineering.

• Helen Lu, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia. She is an expert on interface tissue engineering and the formation of integrated complex tissue systems, multi-functional scaffold design for multi-tissue regeneration, and biomimetic models to evaluate cell-material interactions and composite biomaterials for orthopedic and dental applications.

• Andrew Laine, Chairman and Percy K. and Vida L.W.Hudson Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Professor of Radiology (Physics) at Columbia. His research focuses on the mathematical analysis and quantification of medical images, signal and image processing, and computer-aided diagnosis.

• Barclay Morrison, Vice Dean of Undergraduate Affairs and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Columbia. He is an expert on mechanical injury of the central nervous system: Improvement of prevention strategies through development of critical biomechanical data for the living brain; identification of novel treatment options by understanding the post-traumatic pathobiology in greater detail; engineering new research tolls to enhance studies in the first two areas.

• Elisa Konofagou¸ Robert and Margaret Hariri Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology and Chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department's Graduate Affairs Committee at Columbia. She is an expert on ultrasonics (imaging and therapy), elasticity imaging, signal and image processing and soft tissue mechanics.

• Aaron Kyle, Senior Lecturer of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia. He is an expert on engineering education and laboratory development, biomedical signal processing and acoustics, electromagnetic field-induced tissue growth and repair.

• Tal Danino, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia. His area of research is related to synthetic biology, engineering gene circuits in microbes, Cancer therapeutics and diagnostics, mathematical modeling of gene network dynamics, microfluidics and biosensor applications.