Department of Biomedical Engineering

Stevens Institute of Technology and the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine (HMSOM) have announced an academic partnership whereby HMSOM medical students have an opportunity to pursue a master’s degree in biomedical engineering on Stevens’ Hoboken, New Jersey, campus.

The accelerated program will be part of HMSOM’s highly individualized Phase 3 curriculum, which is available to students seeking to augment previous backgrounds in engineering or related fields.

Medical students with this additional training will be well-equipped to understand advances in medical device design and development in the future to best care for their patients.

“We are so excited to have medical students on campus and participating in this exciting curricular offering,” said Jennifer J. Kang-Mieler, chair and professor of biomedical engineering at Stevens.

HMSOM Vice Dean Stanley R. Terlecky, Ph.D., cited the emergent ties with Stevens on research and academic fronts as “important strategic initiatives through which we will continue to grow.”

Students will be eligible to enroll as early as 2024.

Jinho Kim, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, recently received a $591,006 grant from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation for his project, “Technology Platform for Modeling Cystic Fibrosis Ex Vivo.” The project seeks to establish and validate a robust model of cystic fibrosis (CF) using readily available animal model and human lungs with bioartificial mucus, supported outside the body, to optimize CF gene therapy delivery. The project is in collaboration with Columbia University.

CF is a devastating disease that affects many organs in the body, with the most severe effects occurring in the lungs. CF is caused by a mutation in a specific gene called Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator (CFTR).

Gene therapies focused on CFTR could serve as a cure for CF, especially in children, but delivering such therapies is difficult. Challenges to successful CF gene therapy include delivering the genes to the correct areas of the lung, transporting the microscopic particles used to carry gene therapies through the thick layer of mucus present in the lungs of CF patients, and inserting the necessary genes into the appropriate lung cells.

Existing animal models and cultures of lung cells are currently poor predictors of how well gene therapies will work in humans. To address this deficiency, Kim will develop three types of lung models for testing and optimizing gene therapy ex vivo (outside the body) prior to its use in patients.

The first will be a miniature model of the lung airway, using small sections of lung in a chamber that keeps the lung tissue alive and functional. Incorporating bioartificial mucus designed to mimic actual CF mucus, this model will allow quick and repeatable studies of gene delivery to both human and porcine (pig) lungs.

The second part of Kim’s research will involve creating a more complex lung model of CF using a whole pig lung to evaluate nanotherapeutic delivery (how the microscopic carrier particle packages deliver the genes), cellular uptake (how the cells in the lungs take up these carrier particles), and gene expression (how or if the instructions held inside the gene create the desired end product).

Finally, Kim will develop a whole lung model of CF using human lungs that have been rejected for transplant. This third model will serve as the most complex and most important evidence of how a particular therapy will perform in patients.

This study is designed to overcome the key challenges of CF gene therapy, and this platform for modeling CF ex vivo will provide valuable insight towards developing a cure for CF.

Yu Gan, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, recently received a $600,000 National Science Foundation CAREER Award for his project, “Developing Algorithms for Object-Adaptive Super-Resolution in Biomedical Imaging.” The five-year project seeks to develop intelligent, computationally efficient algorithms to improve the clarity and quality of diagnostic biomedical images in a cost-effective and generalizable manner.

Advanced biomedical imaging technology has revolutionized medical diagnosis and treatment, but the amount of detail, or resolution, that can be captured in biomedical images can be insufficient for specific applications. Conventional software-based solutions for developing super-resolution images — which combine multiple low-resolution images to create one high-resolution image — are slow, expensive and inefficient.

Gan’s project seeks to advance national health by developing an optimized artificial intelligence framework that adaptively improves digital imaging resolution while minimizing the cost of computation in the super-resolution process. He will develop a robust neural network to detect regions of biomedical images to be super-resolved and computationally efficient algorithms to super-resolve those images when enlarged to different scales.

The framework will be generalized for use across multiple biological imaging categories, including optical coherence tomography (OCT), microscopic histology images, confocal images, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound images for different applications.

Resources from Gan’s research will help develop cost-effective biomedical imaging methods that can be more widely distributed than current specialized biomedical imaging facilities allow, improving access to advanced diagnostic methods and medical care for underrepresented groups for whom such access is financially or geographically limited.

Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering Jennifer Kang-Mieler has been elected to be inducted into the 2023 Class of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows.

Election to the AIMBE College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to a medical and biological engineer in the world.

Kang-Mieler was elected by peers and members of the College of Fellows “for innovation in ocular drug delivery, outstanding professional service and contributions to biomedical engineering education.” She was inducted among 140 colleagues into the Class of 2023.

Kang-Mieler's translational NIH-supported research projects include ocular drug delivery, retinal imaging and biomarkers, retinal blood flow and electrophysiology. Her clinical interests include retinal vascular diseases, such as age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.

The College of Fellows, which is comprised of the top 2% of medical and biological engineers globally, honors professionals who have made outstanding contributions to and pioneering advances in engineering and medicine research, practice and education.

AIMBE Fellows are among the most distinguished medical and biological engineers in the world and include three Nobel Prize laureates and 17 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Science and/or Technology and Innovation.