BME Grand Challenges: Defining the Future of the Field

Thursday, October 24, 2024

1:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST

Location: Ballroom I - IV

Moderator(s)

Michael I. Miller, PhD

Bessie Darling Massey Professor and Director
Johns Hopkins University Department of Biomedical Engineering
Baltimore, Maryland, United States
SS

Shankar Subramaniam

Panelist(s)

AB

Alexis Battle
FE

Frederick Epstein
Jordan J. Green, PhD (he/him/his)

Professor
Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, United States
X. Edward Guo, MS, PhD

Professor of Biomedical Engineerig
Columbia University
New York, New York, United States
BO

Brenda M. Ogle

Professor, Department Head
University of Minnesota, United States
GV

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, PhD

Professor
Columbia University, United States
AZ

Anqi Zhang

The IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, together with the Departments of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University and Bioengineering at University of California at San Diego, sponsored an interdisciplinary workshop to define the grand challenges that face biomedical engineering and the mechanisms to address these challenges. This Workshop included leaders from nearly 50 academic institutions nationwide. During this Workshop, five Grand Challenges with cross-cutting themes emerged: Smart Human, developing systems to augment and improve human function; Immunoengineering, harnessing the immune system to improve health and wellness; ExoBrain, engineering the brain and foundations for in vitro modeling; Precision Medicine, creating avatars of human physiology; and Engineering Life, engineering genomes and cells. The conclusions from the Workshop were published in 2024 in IEEE: Open Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology, and include a roadmap of the new technologies, training methods, and interdisciplinary research teams needed to address these Grand Challenges.

This special session will feature panel discussions to highlight future research directions and the potential for impact related to each of the five Grand Challenges. Panelists will include Grand Challenge Workshop participants and faculty from institutions across the nation.