Bioengineering News - Volume 1, Issue 2 October, 2005
Department Secures Location for Future
Expansion
The Bioengineering Department is housed in the James H. Clark Center, a 225,000 sq. ft. science building located at the nexus of the Schools of Engineering and Medicine. It is the only department completely located at the Clark Center. Our long term plans, however, require major expansion. Working closely with Capital Planning, the department has established the final site for the construction of a Bioengineering Department Building as part of the Stanford Engineering Quad Phase 2 project.
The new facility will contain an additional 80,000 sq. ft. of teaching, research and office space and will house 20+ faculty to compliment the existing faculty in the Clark Center. The project, currently under design, is scheduled to complete in 2010.
Deisseroth 2nd NIH Pioneer
Karl
Deisseroth, M.D., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Psychiatry,
has received an NIH Director's Pioneer Award. Coming immediately on the
heels of another Pioneer Award winner, Stephen Quake (right), this marks
the 
second such award Bioengineering faculty has garnered in two years.
Deisseroth is noted for his work in neural stem cell and tissue engineering methods, electrophysiology, molecular biology, neural activity imaging, animal behavior, and computational neural network modeling. Also a clinician in the psychiatry department, Professor Deisseroth employs novel electromagnetic brain stimulation techniques in human patients for therapeutic purposes.
Also Earns NeuroSci Award
Deisseroth is also one of four recipients who has been awarded a Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award for 2005-2007 by the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience. The awards pay $200,000 over two years for research projects that seek to advance the field of neuroscience by developing new tools and techniques enabling deeper understanding of the brain.
Wallace H. Coulter Foundation Grant Awarded
The Bioengineering department has been awarded a Wallace H. Coulter
Translational Research Partnership in Biomedical Engineering Grant. The
grant will provide $500,000 for the next five years. Through this program,
the Foundation will form a working partnership with Stanford to promote,
develop and realize translational research through activities such
as funding promising projects, increasing and supporting effective
collaborations, increasing awareness of the importance of moving promising
technologies to product commercialization, and developing and supporting
sustainable programs and processes that will increase, enhance, and
accelerate this movement. We are grateful for this support.
Proposition 71 Funding Begins Impact
In
November, 2004, the voters of California overwhelmingly approved Proposition
71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative. As a result
the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine was formed. Funding
to begin training a cadre of scholars in adult and embryonic stem cell
research was awarded Sept. 9 to the Stanford University School of Medicine,
when this agency announced its first grants. The $3.7 million award to
Stanford will help support 16 graduate and post-graduate scientists who
have expressed an interest in pursuing stem cell research. All of the
Stanford trainees will draw on the expertise of faculty members in subjects
as diverse as law, ethics and human-disease processes, said Michael Longaker,
MD, chair of the advisory committee for Stanford’s Program in Regenerative
Medicine.
Longaker was also recently awarded an NIH Roadmap Training Grant to support nine
scholars who are already receiving funding for training in regenerative medicine.
New Magazine Launched
In
June, a team of Stanford researchers published the first issue of a new
quarterly magazine called Biomedical Computation Review. It's part of
an innovative outreach plan for a $20-million biomedical computing center
at Stanford, called Simbios (Physics-based Simulation of Biological Structures),
funded by the National Institutes of Health.
Modeling itself after popular science magazines such as Discover and Technology
Review, BCR offers news and feature articles aimed at researchers who want to
use mathematical and computational methods to answer biological questions.
The inaugural issue includes a list of the top achievements and challenges in computational biology and reports on the goals of each of the first four National Centers for Biomedical Computing that were funded by the NIH last fall.
The magazine is also published in electronic form at the following address: http://www.biomedicalcomputationreview.org.
BioX Awards Fellowships
The Bio-X Graduate Fellowship program is made possible by a generous gift by an anonymous donor. The intent of the fellowship is to provide funding to Ph.D. students that have demonstrated a commitment to interdisciplinary research and show promise for future excellence in science at the forefront of biology and other sciences. The three-year fellowship is awarded annually and provides up to $50,000 each year to be utilized toward payments for graduate tuition and stipend. Six Bio-X Fellowships have been awarded to students in Bioengineering.
Fellows in Bioengineering (with award dates):
Adam Grossman (2004)
Amanda Malone (2004)
Mindy Chang (2005)
Virginia Chu (2005)
Stephen Lee (2005)
Prasheel Lillaney (2005)
The academic year 2005-06 showed an increase in yield over the previous
year. Over 70 % of students accepted in Bioengineering have decided to
come to Stanford.
Paul
Yock, Co-Chair of Bioengineering and Professor of Bioengineering, Medicine
and Mechanical Engineering (by courtesy), was recently awarded the 2005
Innovator Award for the Phoenix Hall of Fame for Medical Device and Diagnostic
Leadership.
Other News
Dr.
John Linehan has joined the Department as a Consulting Professor in support
of the Stanford Program in Biodesign. Linehan joins Bioengineering after
an illustrious career as Vice President with the Whitaker Foundation,
which is having a planned closing of its doors in 2006 after 25 years
of supporting Biomedical Engineering Programs in the United States. Prior
to Whitaker, Linehan was Chair of Bioengineering at Marquette University.
New Faculty Search
The Department seeks applicants for two new tenure-line faculty positions.
The search is open at the level of Assistant Professor or untenured
Associate Professor. Applicants are expected to have a doctoral degree
in bioengineering, biomedical engineering, biophysics, or any related
discipline. We encourage applications from physician-engineers. We
have a particular interest in candidates with expertise in biomedical
devices, biomedical imaging, cell and molecular engineering, regenerative
medicine, tissue engineering, and biomedical computation, but are also
open to applications from candidates in any area related to bioengineering.
Applications will be accepted until December 15, 2005.
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