Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering 1996 Annual Report [text version]

Whiting School of Engineering 1996 Annual Report

Biomedical Engineering
Exploring a Changing Discipline
Learning How We Learn
A Flair for Computers Aids in Research
Department Facts

Exploring a Changing Discipline
In academia as well as in business, success stories often begin with a hunch, a gut feeling. One of biomedical engineering’s newest, most popular courses is the result of Professor Aleksander Popel’s intuitions. “I felt that the majority of our students don’t know the issues confronting biomedical engineering as a discipline, or as an industry. The industrial market is growing rapidly, and the companies are very heterogeneous in nature. In fact, in the future engineers and scientists from an increasing number of disciplines will be working for biotechnology firms. In addition, there are many issues that lie outside of lecture halls and laboratories. For example, what types of products can and should be patented? What about transgenic animals? Some issues are even being debated at the legislative level. Our students need to be aware of these things at an early stage in their education.”

In spring 1995, Popel began working in earnest with Murray Sachs, department director and Massey Professor of Biomedical Engineering, to make Biomedical Engineering for the Real World ready for the spring 1996 semester. The two called upon faculty and members of the department’s Biomedical Engineering Advisory Council for names of possible speakers. Initially concerned that not enough students would enroll, Popel’s fears were quickly eased as over 190 students registered. Word of the new course spread, and the number actually attending any of the 13 lectures easily broke the 200 mark.

The course’s speaker list reads like a who’s who in biomedical engineering. To give only three examples, Kevin O’Connor, executive director of the American Institute of Medical and Biomedical Engineering, discussed “Ethics Case Study: Patenting Life.” Kenneth Taylor, vice president at ValleyLab, Inc., presented “A Perspective on the Medical Device Industry.” Christopher Christoforou, an alumnus and engineer at United States Surgical Corp., talked about “The Role of Biomedical Engineers in Product Development.” From the popularity of the course’s first offering, it is clear that the department has a winner on its hands, thanks to the efforts of all involved.

Learning How We Learn
Assistant Professor Reza Shadmehr and his students integrate approaches from robotics, cognitive neuroscience, and functional imaging of the brain to discover the essence of motor learning in humans. In January 1996, Shadmehr and two graduate students traveled to Boston to perform an experiment on an elderly patient, “H.M.” They took a robot they designed to study how humans learn to control arm movement. The patient’s task was to guide the robot to a sequence of targets and try to “explode” as many targets as he could. While he was doing this, the robot produced dynamics of a viscous force field, profoundly disturbing his movements. But within 30 minutes, H.M. was moving smoothly and accurately to the targets, apparently having learned the dynamics of the task.

To Shadmehr, H.M. was a particularly fascinating patient due to his acute amnesia, the result of an operation to control epilepsy. For example, while learning to move the robot, H.M. told the same story to the research team nine times in 45 minutes. On the following day, H.M. remembered neither the robot nor the research team. However, he manipulated the robot like an expert. “Working with H.M. and others has provided neuroscience with basic principles on memory formation in the brain,” says Shadmehr. “One principle is that brain regions which store motor skills are different from those that accumulate episodes and events of life. H.M.’s surgery profoundly affected his ability to store long-term memories of events that occur in his life. But he can learn and store motor memories normally.”

In order to understand where and how motor memories are stored in the brain, Shadmehr uses positron emission tomography (PET) to image the brain while a patient is learning a task (see photo). “We hope that by understanding which parts of the brain are involved in the formation of motor memory, we can better understand why certain brain disorders affect only certain memory systems,” Shadmehr comments.

In 1995, the Office of Naval Research recognized the potential Shadmehr’s research holds with a prestigious Young Investigator Program grant.

A Flair for Computers Aids in Research
Guy Shechter caught the bug early. His father, who worked at Texas Instruments, brought home a TI-99/4a in 1982 to his eight-year-old son. Shechter sat down, plugged in, and formed a lasting relationship with the world of computers. So it’s only natural that the biomedical engineering senior also double majored in computer science and used his expertise in that area in undergraduate research projects.

Shechter worked in the laboratory of Robert Phair, a former faculty member whose research interests include the cellular control systems that regulate calcium transport in vascular smooth muscle cells. It turns out that calcium is particularly important in blood vessels, changing hormonal and metabolic signals into information that controls intracellular processes. These cellular processes go haywire with the onset of arteriosclerosis—the most prevalent cause of death in the United States.

“Dr. Phair was excellent in terms of encouraging free thought,” Shechter says. “After working in his lab for a while, I realized I wanted to do something that would tie in with my interests in computers. Together we devised a project in which I looked at the behavior of the IP3 receptor, which is one type of intracellular calcium channel. Dr. Phair has developed the Incremental Model, a way to show how the IP3 receptors release calcium incrementally.” Shechter designed a program that takes the three-state model developed by his adviser and visualizes IP3 receptor behavior within eight parameters. “This tool allows the investigator to get a feel for how the model is performing at different points in parameter space,” according to Shechter. While working on this project, Shechter picked up skills in computer graphics and high performance computing which he plans to apply to his newfound interest in medical imaging.

Based on his research, Shechter won one of the prestigious Provost’s Undergraduate Research Awards plus a biomedical engineering undergraduate research award. As an undergraduate, Shechter was active in the Jewish Students Association and ran a weekly one-hour radio show for 18 months on WHSR. Currently, Shechter is pursuing a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at Hopkins.

Established 1970
Biomedical engineering, as a discipline, has been part of Hopkins education since 1946. It became a department in the School of Medicine in 1970 and the Whiting School assumed the undergraduate program in 1979.

Phone 410-955-3131

Email bme@bme.jhu.edu

WWW http://www.bme.jhu.edu/

Students
1995-96 Academic Year
Graduate: 39 (M.S.E.); 63 (Ph.D.)
Undergraduate: 361

Faculty and Researchers
Murray B. Sachs, Director
B. Rita Alevriadou
William C. Hunter
Richard J. Johns
Steven Jones
Scot C. Kuo
Kam W. Leong
Elliot R. McVeigh
Robert D. Phair
Aleksander S. Popel
Lawrence P. Schramm
Reza Shadmehr
Mark Shelhamer
Norman F. Sheppard, Jr.
Artin A. Shoukas
Nitish V. Thakor
Leslie Tung
Raimond L. Winslow
Eric D. Young
David T. Yue
Xiaoquin Wang

Research Areas
Biomaterials
Biomedical Imaging Systems
Biomedical Sensors/Instrumentation
Cardiovascular Systems Physiology
Molecular and Cellular Systems Physiology
Systems Neurophysiology
Theoretical and Computational Biology

Biomedical Engineering Exploring a Changing Discipline Learning How We Learn A Flair for Computers Aids in Research Department Facts

Biomedical Engineering
Exploring a Changing Discipline
Learning How We Learn
A Flair for Computers Aids in Research
Department Facts