When new students and faculty members first arrive at Case Western University’s Biomedical Engineering Department or Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, they often cite two reasons that drew them to the institutions – the close proximity between the university and healthcare system and the opportunity to collaborate with leading multidisciplinary experts. That’s the case for four faculty members, highlighted in this spring’s newsletter, who joined the Biomedical Engineering Department at the start of the 2024-2025 academic year.
Rui Cao, Hamid Charkhkar, Ana Hernandez Reynoso and Luke Osborn are expanding the department’s expertise in artificial intelligence, biomedical imaging and neural engineering and rehabilitation. You can read about their research projects in the article on page 6, as well as their partnerships with peers from the Lerner Research Institute and clinicians from area hospitals.
Collaboration is also central to the work of the Case Western Reserve University Center for Imaging Research (CCIR), which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. Multidisciplinary investigators at the CCIR are at the forefront of biomedical imaging innovations that solve clinical problems for a multitude of diseases and conditions. We present four projects focused on prostate cancer beginning on page 10.
We also pay tribute to Dominique Durand, a professor in the Case Western Reserve University Department of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Neurosciences and Department of Physiology and Biophysics. Durand has dedicated his 42-year career at the university to solving problems in the nervous system. The profile on page 14 delves into his work as director of the Neural Engineering Center in the Case School of Engineering School of Medicine and his commitment to teaching undergraduate and graduate students.
That commitment to teaching – to disseminating information on biomedical engineering advancements and innovations – is evident in campus events hosted by university faculty, centers and affiliated consortiums. In this issue, we share details and photos from two symposiums: Five Decades of Restoring Upper Extremity Movement with Neuroprostheses: 1972 – 2024, presented by the Cleveland FES Center, and the 2024 Society for Biomaterials (SFB) Midwest Symposium, hosted by Case Western Reserve University.
We encourage you to read about these events, plus news about our faculty and students. And we invite you to engage with our faculty and reach out to us with your news at bme-news@case.edu.
| Robert F. Kirsch Allen H. and Constance T. Ford Professor Chair of Biomedical Engineering Case Western Reserve University |
Geoffrey Vince The Virginia Lois Kennedy Endowed Chair in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Therapeutics Lerner Research Institute Cleveland Clinic |