Strategic Connections – Partnering to Improve Patient Care
As a Ph.D. student in Professor Hongjun Wang’s biomedical engineering lab, Nuo Xu is the beneficiary of her mentor’s longstanding collaboration with Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH) physician researchers.
“Working with HMH has been invaluable,” says Xu, who recently co-authored a paper published in Advanced Sensor Research with Wang and HMH researchers on the use of nanoparticles to detect disease. “Their guidance has played a crucial role in advancing my work, and I am excited about the potential for future collaboration.”
Now, thanks to a memorandum of understanding signed in October 2024 between Stevens and HMH, students and faculty at both institutions are looking forward to an exciting array of even more opportunities for collaboration.
In February, HMH physicians, scientists and nurses joined Stevens faculty — more than 60 participants in all — to talk about working together in four specific areas: chronic care delivery; medical imaging; bioinformatics and rehabilitation engineering; and medical robotics. And beginning in Fall 2025, HMH medical students will be able to earn a master’s degree at Stevens in biomedical engineering.
“We’re hoping to see joint faculty appointments, more student exchanges and mentoring — this is really just the beginning,” says Wang, who has been collaborating with researchers at what was then Hackensack University Medical Center since soon after he joined the Stevens faculty in 2005.
“I was doing translational research and needed clinician collaborators,” says Wang, who is well-regarded for his innovative approach to creating artificial human tissue and organs as well as the use of gold nanoparticles to more precisely deliver cancer drugs.
As director of the Semcer Center for Healthcare Innovation at Stevens, Wang plans to help coordinate the HMH collaboration.
Over the years, Hackensack University Medical Center morphed into HMH, a major health network with its own medical school and research facilities, including the Center for Discovery and Innovation (CDI), designed to more quickly bring discoveries to patients.
Dr. Johannes Zakrzewski, a pediatric hematologist/oncologist and founding principal CDI investigator, is one of Wang’s longtime collaborators.
“It just makes sense for biologists and engineers to work together,” Zakrzewski says. “It’s essential to making meaningful progress.”
– Joan Cramer
“HMH and Stevens are very compatible institutions. Ultimately, this continued partnership will lead to scientific advancements translating into better outcomes for our patients.”
– Dr. Ihor Sawczuk, President, Academics, Research and Innovation; Founding Chair, Research Institute, Hackensack Meridian Health