Bioengineering, translational research, and technology commercialization

Abstract

Summary form only given. Bioengineering is the fastest growing engineering discipline in the world. The University of Washington's Department of Bioengineering was set up in 1967, equally grounded in both the School of Medicine and College of Engineering. It has now 30 core faculty, 38 adjunct faculty, 139 graduate students, 117 undergraduate students and 129 staff members, including 54 postdoctoral research fellows. Currently, there are five major areas of research and training within the Department: (1) Distributed Diagnosis and Home Healthcare (D2H2); (2) Engineered Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering; (3) Molecular Bioengineering and Nanotechnology; (4) Medical Imaging and Image-Guided Therapy; and (5) Computational and Integrative Bioengineering. Unique integration of biology, engineering, nanotechnology, information technology and medicine has been underway inside our department for a long time, continuously creating new frontiers and opportunities in research, education and technology transfer. An unusual aspect of our research is our tie with industry. We have been prolific in our inventions (470), patents (240), licenses (80), and entrepreneurship. The faculty, students and staff of the Department have fostered the development of 30 start-up companies and thousands of new jobs as a spin-off of our research endeavors. Also, we have developed in the Department of Bioengineering a unique entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship educational and training program called Program on Technology Commercialization (PTC). In this presentation, I will provide an overview on the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, Distributed Diagnosis and Home Healthcare (D2H2) and Medical Imaging, several entrepreneurship and technology commercialization examples, future directions in the 21s century, and how engineers can work together towards improving global health.