Perspectives on Bioengineering Clinical Immersion: History, Innovation, and Impact.

Opportunities to provide clinical immersion experiences to bioengineering undergraduate students have expanded over the last several years. These programs allow students to observe the clinical environment in order to better understand workflow processes, the context in which medical equipment is used, and identify unmet needs firsthand. While each program focuses on identifying unmet needs, these experiences vary in content and implementation. Here we discuss features of clinical immersion programs, share details of our program after six years, and present data regarding post-graduation employment of our participants. Students who participated in the University of Illinois at Chicago Clinical Immersion Program are not more likely to pursue careers in industry as compared to non-participants, nor do they demonstrate an ability to find a job more quickly than non-participants. However, participants who did enter into industry self-reported that the program was impactful to both their career interests and ability to find their first employment position.

Fifty Years of Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Education.

Undergraduate education in biomedical engineering (BME) and bioengineering (BioE) has been in place for more than 50 years. It has been important in shaping the field as a whole. The early undergraduate programs developed shortly after BME graduate programs, as universities sought to capitalize on the interest of students and the practical advantages of having BME departments that could control their own resources and curriculum. Unlike other engineering fields, BME did not rely initially on a market for graduates in industry, although BME graduates subsequently have found many opportunities. BME undergraduate programs exploded in the 2000s with funding from the Whitaker Foundation and resources from other agencies such as the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. The number of programs appears to be reaching a plateau, with 118 accredited programs in the United States at present. We show that there is a core of material that most undergraduates are expected to know, which is different from the knowledge base of other engineers not only in terms of biology, but in the breadth of engineering. We also review the role of important organizations and conferences in the growth of BME, special features of BME education, first placements of BME graduates, and a few challenges to address in the future.

JNER at 15 years: analysis of the state of neuroengineering and rehabilitation.

On JNER's 15th anniversary, this editorial analyzes the state of the field of neuroengineering and rehabilitation. I first discuss some ways that the nature of neurorehabilitation research has evolved in the past 15 years based on my perspective as editor-in-chief of JNER and a researcher in the field. I highlight increasing reliance on advanced technologies, improved rigor and openness of research, and three, related, new paradigms - wearable devices, the Cybathlon competition, and human augmentation studies - indicators that neurorehabilitation is squarely in the age of wearability. Then, I briefly speculate on how the field might make progress going forward, highlighting the need for new models of training and learning driven by big data, better personalization and targeting, and an increase in the quantity and quality of usability and uptake studies to improve translation.

Authorship Trends Over the Past 30-Years in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

In academia, manuscripts serve as an important component of career development. The past several years have seen heightened evaluation of the role of the gender gap in career advancement, as well as other bibliometric changes in publications. We therefore analyzed authorship and publication trends in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering over the past three decades (one complete year of manuscripts for each decade; 1986, 1996, 2006, and 2016). The variables analyzed were number of authors per manuscript, numerical position of the corresponding author, number of collaborating institutions and countries, number of references, and number of citations per manuscript. The gender of both the first and corresponding authors was identified and analyzed over time and by region. Globally, the percentage of female first and corresponding authors significantly increased from 0% in 1986 to 28.6% (p = 0.003) and 20.4% (p = 0.0009), respectively, in 2016. Although there were significant differences regarding female first and corresponding author over time, they did not vary by region of origin (p = 0.5 and 0.2, respectively). Overall, these findings highlight the improvements made and the challenges that still exist related to publishing within the bioengineering field.

Physical Rehabilitation: A Historical Look.

Medicine aims toward restoring, maintaining, and improving human health, and engineering aims toward restoring, maintaining and improving human wellness. Both disciplines apply knowledge from science and technology at large to accomplish such objectives. Bioengineering, also called biomedical engineering, is defined as the application of engineering principles and techniques to problems in medicine and biology (always with restoration, maintenance, and improvement in mind), which now also includes veterinary medicine, and the environment in general.

Evolution of robotic systems for transoral head and neck surgery.

Oropharyngeal tumor is traditionally resected from an open approach, often necessitating the need of a midline mandibulotomy in order to remove tumor safely with oncologic margins. The limitations imposed by a transoral route include poor visualization of the inferior extent of the oropharynx, rigid instrumentation, and inability to resect tumor that extends caudally into the supraglottis. While visualization with angled endoscopes, coupled with flexible laser development and microscopic magnification may overcome some of these limitations, this technique suffers from linear trajectory of the instruments which hampers expedient surgical resection in a 3-dimensional fashion. With development of the Da Vinci Surgical System, the safety and oncologic feasibility of removing oropharyngeal tumors are made possible because it provides a 3-dimensional magnification of the surgical field and wristed maneuverability of the surgical instruments which enable surgeons to operate around tight anatomical confines. Nevertheless, this first-generation robot is continually being modified with more flexibility and maneuverability through the development of robots like the FLEX Robotic System and more recently the Da Vinci Single Port System (SP). In this review, we will discuss the historic developments of robots for transoral applications, present the current approved robotic systems, and highlight the upcoming robots for transoral robotic surgery (TORS). Finally, we will also propose an ideal TORS surgical robot by highlighting the engineering technologies to accomplish these challenges.

A Conversation with John McKetta.

John J. McKetta, Jr. is a foundational figure in chemical engineering education and energy policy in the United States. An authority on the thermodynamic properties of hydrocarbons and an energy adviser to several US presidents, McKetta helped to educate and mentor thousands of students at the University of Texas at Austin for over 40 years, many of whom became leading figures in the energy and petrochemical industries, as well as in academia. As dean of the College of Engineering, McKetta helped to establish a bioengineering program, which later became the Biomedical Engineering Department, at the University of Texas at Austin, and was a tireless advocate for excellence and a focus on the student. At age 100, McKetta recalls the challenges and opportunities he faced in childhood, his memories of the emergence of petrochemical engineering, and his views on chemical engineering education and the people it has impacted in the United States over the past 100 years.