Biomedical Engineering (Ph.D., M.S.B.M.E.)

Faculty

Joel L Berry, Research Associate Professor (Biomedical Engineering); Medical Device Design, Cardiovascular Biomechanics, Cardiovascular and Orthopedic Tissue Engineering, Medical Device Entrepreneurship

Allan C. Dobbins, Associate Professor (Electrical Engineering); Human and Machine Vision, Neural Computation, Brain Imaging, Scientific Visualization

Alan Eberhardt, Professor (Theoretical and Applied Mechanics); Solid Mechanics, Injury Biomechanics, Biomedical Implants, Analytical and Numerical Methods in Biomechanics

Vladimir G. Fast, Associate Professor (Physics); Cardiac Electrophysiology

Dale S. Feldman, Associate Professor (Bioengineering); Biomaterials, Soft-Tissue Biomechanics, Polymeric Implants

Ho-Wook Jun, Associate Professor (Bioengineering); Biomimetic Nanotechnology, Biomaterials, Tissue Engineering

John C. Middleton, Research Professor (Polymer Science); Synthesis of Biodegradable Polymers for Drug Delivery, Medical Device and Tissue Engineering Applications, Structure - Property Relationships

Andrew E. Pollard, Professor (Biomedical Engineering); Simulation and Modeling of Electrical Signals of the Heart

Jack M. Rogers, Professor (Bioengineering); Computer Simulations of Re-Entry, Signal Analysis of Cardiac Arrhythmias

Yuhua Song, Assistant Professor (Materials Science and Engineering); Computational Biomechanics, Computational Biology, Multiscale Modeling

Timothy M. Wick, Professor and Chair (Chemical Engineering); Orthopedic and Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering, Regenerative Medicine, Bioreactor and Bioprocess Design, Cryopreservation, Cell Adhesion

Xincheng Yao, Assistant Professor, (Optics); Optical Imaging of Neural Function, Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT)

Adjunct Faculty

Andreas Anayiotos, Associate Professor, (Engineering); Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, Cyprus University of Technology, Cardiovascular Fluid Mechanics, Cardiovascular Modeling, Computational Hemodynamics

Martha W. Bidez, Professor, (Biomedical Engineering); President and CEO, BioEchos, Injury Biomechanics, Automotive Safety

Glenn S. Fleisig, Assistant Professor, (Biomedical Engineering); Research Director, American Sports Medicine Institute, Sports and Injury Biomechanics

Richard A. Gray, Associate Professor, (Biomedical Engineering); Biomedical Engineer, Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Optical Mapping of Re-Entry Fibrillation and Defibrillation

Rodolphe Katra, Assistant Professor (Biomedical Engineering); Principal Scientist, Research and Technology, Corventis Medical, Remote Disease Monitoring and Prediction, Cardiac Electrophysiology

Donald B. Twieg, Professor (Biomedical Engineering); Medical Imaging, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Techniques, Functional MRI of Brain and Heart

Emeritus Faculty

Ernest Stokely, Professor Emeritus, Associate Dean Emeritus (Biomedical Engineering); Imaging techniques for measuring physiological function, and the application of signal processing, image processing, and image understanding techniques to medical images

William Smith, Professor Emeritus (Physics); Development and use of novel instrumentation for the study of cardiac arrhythmias, especially ventricular fibrillation and defibrillation.  Techniques include multichannel data acquisition and signal processing and radiofrequency telemetry.

Secondary Faculty

Jonas S. Almeida, Professor and Director, Division of Informatics (Department of Pathology); Computational Infrastructure for Integrative Bioinformatics 

Franklin Amthor, Professor (Psychology); Neurophysiology of vision computer graphics

Susan L. Bellis, Professor (Physiology & Biophysics); Integrin Biology/implant surfaces

James Broome, Professor (Prosthodontics); Polymers, adhesives, physical and mechanical testing, clinical research

Brigitta Brott, Associate Professor (Cardiovascular Disease); Angiogenesis, cardiac angioplasty, coronary artery disease, cardiac catheterization, interventional cardiology and stents

John O. Burgess, Professor (Prosthodontics); Clinical trials, Caries models, dental materials

Derrick Dean, Associate Professor (Materials Science and Engineering); Polymers

Lawrence J. DeLucas, Professor (Optometry); Protein crystal growth

Georg Deutsch, Associate Professor (Radiology); Cognitive neuroscience and brain imaging

Evangelos Eleftheriou, Associate Professor (Mechanical Engineering); Mechanical systems, automated manufacturing, and mechanical design

Hassan Fathallah-Shaykh, Associate Professor, (Neurology); Systems biology of cancer, the dynamics of molecular networks, biological rhythms, and modeling/analysis of microarray data

Paul D. R. Gamlin, Professor (Vision Sciences); Eye movements, Pupillary Light Reflex

Timothy J. Gawne, Associate Professor (Vision Sciences); Central Visual Processing

Ken Hoyt, Assistant Professor (Radiology); Contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging with a focus on the associated bioeffects, contrast agent targeting, and the potential for localized drug delivery

Raymond E. Ideker, Professor (Cardiovascular Disease); Study of Cardiac Arrhythmia, Cardioversion and Electrical Ablation for Treatment Of Arrhythmia

Tom Jannett, Professor (Electrical and Computer Engineering); Control systems, Biomedical Instrumentation, modeling and simulation, intelligent sensor networks

Amjad Javed, Associate Professor (Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery); Bone, cartilage development and remodeling, Adipogenesis, gene knock-out models, transcriptional regulation of skeletal cell differentiation

Vicki Johnson, Assistant Professor (School of Nursing); Community health outcomes and systems

Kent T. Keyser, Professor (Vision Sciences); Neurotransmitters and receptors

Hyunki Kim, Assistant Professor (Radiology); Breast, pancreatic, and brain cancer imaging

Dennis F. Kucik, Associate Professor (Pathology); Cell adhesion and motility

William R. Lacefield, Professor (Prosthodontics); Coatings for implants, Dental Ceramics and Alloys, porcelain

Adrienne C. Lahti, Professor (Psychiatry); Use of multimodal brain imaging techniques (PET, fMRI, MR Spectroscopy) to study the neuropathology of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and to evaluate the effects of psychotropic drugs on brain function and biochemistry; Translational work aiming at bridging human brain imaging and postmortem studies

Chris M. Lawson, Professor (Physics); Nonlinear Optics, Fiber Optics, Optical Sensor

Lei Liu, Associate Professor (Optometry); Low vision visual function and rehabilitation

Mary MacDougall, Professor (Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery); Genetic dental diseases, tooth development, mineralized matrix, gene regulation

Michael McCraken, Associate Professor (Prosthodontics); Dental implants, Biomimetic materials, growth factors

Erwin Montgomery, Professor (Neurology); Deep brain stimulation

Joanne E. Murphy-Ullrich, Professor (Pathology); Regulation of cell death and motility by cell adhesion signaling and role of growth factor control in diabetic and fibrotic diseases

L. Burt Nabors, Professor (Neurology); Brain tumor treatment and research program.

Alfred Paige, Assistant Professor (Neurology); Treatment of epilepsy, seizure localization and epilepsy surgery

Vladimir Parpura, Associate Professor (Neurobiology); Ion channels and synaptic function
systems Neuroscience and vision

Steven Pogwizd, Professor (Cardiovascular Disease); Medicine; Physiology and Biophysics

Charles W. Prince, Professor (Nutrition Sciences); Dental nutrition, Bone Biochemistry, Vitamin D, Calcium and Phosphorus Metabolism

Firoz Rahemtulla, Professor (Oral Biology); Connective Tissue Biochemistry

Michelle Robbin, Professor (Radiology); Hemodialysis patient ultrasound, ultrasound contrast agents and vascular ultrasound

Rosalia Scripa, Professor (Materials Science and Engineering); Ceramics and glass, Extractive Metallurgy, semiconductor of crystal growth, Electronic-Magnetic Materials

Jere Segrest, Professor (Gerontology/Geriatrics/Palliative Care); Plasma Lipoprotein structure and function

Rosa Serra, Professor (Cell Biology); Mechanism of TGF-ß action in developmental and disease processes 

Murat Tanik, Professor (Electrical and Computer Engineering); Software Systems Engineering, integrated systems design, Process Engineering

Gregg Vaughn, Professor (Electrical and Computer Engineering); Digital signal processing, applications of microprocessors, digital communications

Kristina M. Visscher, Assistant Professor (Neurobiology); Human behavior and brain activity using precise behavioral measurements (including psychophysics and tracking of eye movements), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG)

Yogesh Vohra, Professor, (Physics); Biotechnology, Nanostructured Materials

Harrison Walker, Assistant Professor (Neurology); Deep brain stimulation for the management of Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders

Yuhua Zhang, Assistant Professor (Ophthalmology); Advanced retinal imaging technology

Yong Zhou, Assistant Professor (Pulmonary/Allergy/Critical Care); Myofibroblast differentiation and emphysema

Program Information

M.S.B.M.E. Program

The Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering prepares students for entry into the doctoral program, biomedical industry, or professional school.  Primary research areas are biomedical imaging, biomedical implants and devices, cardiac electrophysiology, multiscale computational modeling, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Other research opportunities are available through our ongoing collaborations with the UAB Medical and Dental Schools.  With the terminal degree, employment is usually found in healthcare delivery, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, biomedical imaging, instrumentation, medical sales and marketing, regulatory agencies, or computer application groups. For admission to the program, a student should have earned a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering, engineering or a closely related field.

Students with undergraduate degrees in the physical sciences, life sciences, or mathematics will also be considered for admission; however, such students may be required to demonstrate competence in engineering areas usually found in an undergraduate engineering curriculum. In some cases, preparatory courses in mathematics, engineering or life sciences may be required, with specific recommendations made by the Biomedical Engineering (BME) Graduate Program Committee. Admission to the BME Master’s program is competitive, and successful applicants will usually present scores of at least 550 on the verbal and at least 750 on the quantitative sections of the GRE General Test. Typical students have an undergraduate GPA of 3.5 or greater and have participated in at least one research project while an undergraduate (e.g., honors research, summer research experience, laboratory research, senior design, internship). 

The student’s research advisor and the Graduate Program Committee work to devise an individualized curriculum developed to ensure each student obtains the coursework to provide an in-depth knowledge of both quantitative methods and human physiology necessary to succeed in completion of the thesis research.  The Master’s degree requires a minimum of 24 semester hours of graduate coursework beyond the Bachelor’s. This includes: BME 517 Engineering Analysis, BME 670 Quantitative Physiology, three 1-hour Departmental seminar courses (BME 601), at least one 3-hour Biostatistics course. Additional coursework is a combination of graduate level life sciences and bioengineering courses selected in consultation with your thesis advisor and approved by the BME Graduate Program Committee. 

The majority of students carry out research leading to a thesis (plan I option). To receive a Master’s degree in BME, the student must publish their research in a peer-review journal article; typically a first-author publication.  The student is expected to present their research at a scientific or technical conference; preferably at a relevant national or international scientific meeting. Publication of at least one peer-reviewed manuscript is a requirement for graduation from the BME MSBME program.  Plan I students must register for at least six semester hours of BME 699 (thesis research) and successfully write, present and defend a thesis based on their research.

Ph.D. Program

The Ph.D. degree prepares students for careers in industry and academics. Students entering the doctoral program will possess an M.S. or be currently enrolled in the D.M.D/Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D. program at UAB. Students earning an M.S. in BME and desiring to stay for the Ph.D. can petition the BME Gradiuate Program Committee upon successful defense of their MSBME. Only Plan I M.S. students are considered for the Ph.D. program; these students do not have to reapply to the Graduate School, but instead petition the BME Graduate Program Committee. The decision is based on the student’s academic record as well as recommendations from the student’s M.S. thesis committee. Students who have earned a M.S. degree elsewhere may apply directly to the BME Ph.D. program. 

Admission to the Ph.D. program is competitive, and successful applicants will usually present scores of at least 550 on the verbal and at least 750 on the quantitative sections of the GRE General Test. Typical students have a graduate GPA of 3.5 or greater and have their previous research in a peer-review journal.  Students admitted to the Doctoral program typically receive a competitive stipend that usually includes payment of tuition.

The Ph.D. degree requires a minimum of 18 semester hours of graduate coursework beyond the Master’s. This includes: BME 517 Engineering Analysis, BME 770 Quantitative Physiology, and at least one 3-hour Biostatistics course (BST 621) if not taken as part of the students Master’s program. One additional statistics course is strongly recommended for the Ph.D. degree (BST621 and 622). Additionally, Ph.D. students must complete three semester hours of Departmental Seminar (BME 701). At least 12 hours of Dissertation Research (BME 799) is required for the Ph.D. degree. Additional graduate level life sciences and/or bioengineering coursework may be required in conjunction with the student's dissertation research committee. The program of study for each student is defined by the student and the Research Advisor and approved by the Graduate Program Committee during the student's first year of doctoral study. Near the completion of the course plan, a written proposal for the dissertation research must be submitted and presented to the Dissertation Committee before the student can be admitted to candidacy for the degree. A dissertation that presents the results of the student's original research must be successfully defended.

Ph.D. students are required to publish two additional manuscripts, typically first-author peer-review publications.  Ph.D. students are required to present their research in a BME seminar near the end of their studies. Ph.D. students are expected to present their research at a relevant national or international scientific or technical conference meeting.

NIBIB Supported T-32 Predoctoral Training Grant

National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) has awarded an interdisciplinary predoctoral training grant to UAB that is entitled “Nanotechnology in Biosensors and Bioengineering”. It is a five-year program that started on September 1, 2007. Benefits to participating graduate students include: graduate stipends of $25,000 per year, full tuition and health insurance, and a travel award of $1,000 per year. The purpose of this grant is to implement a training program at the interfaces of physics, chemistry, materials science and engineering, and biomedical engineering that will reduce the time from discovery of a new tool in nanotechnology to its application in medical devices, tissue engineering, and biosensors for earliest detection of molecular signatures of disease.

For more information regarding this training program, visit http://www.uab.edu/cnmb/graduate/index.html.

Additional Information

For detailed information, contact Dr. Timothy M. Wick, Professor and Chair, BME Graduate Program Director, UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, 807 Shelby Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research Bldg., 1825 University Blvd., Birmingham AL 35294-2182.

Telephone 996-6936

E-mail uabbmegrad@uab.edu

Web www.eng.uab.edu

Course Descriptions

Unless otherwise noted, all courses are for 3 semester hours of credit. Course numbers preceded with an asterisk indicate courses that can be repeated for credit, with stated stipulations.
Biomedical Engineering (BME)

598 Biomedical Product Development. Design and development issues of the medical products industry. Consideration of the impact of legal, regulatory and marketing issues, business ethics and economics will be addressed. 3 credit hours.

508 Biofluids. Application of fluid mechanics in blood flow in the circulatory system; cardiovascular fluid mechanics, wall shear stress and the development of atherosclerosis, viscoelastic behavior of the arteries, Non-Newtonian character of blood. 3 credit hours.

512 Biomechanical Measurements. Observation, measurement and analysis of basic biomechanical variables such as stress, strain, pressure and flow. Emphasis on basic experimental examples and using the computer for data acquisitions, processing, analysis and preparation of laboratory reports. 3 credit hours.

517 Engineering Analysis. Solutions to engineering problems involving ordinary and partial differential equations; Laplace transforms, power series, Bessel functions, Legendre polynomials, Fourier series, Fourier integral and transform, Sturm-Liouville and separation of variables. 3 credit hours.

520 Implant-Tissue Interactions. An overview of implant biocompatibility including tissue histopathology, histology of implant response and the regulatory process for medical devices. 3 credit hours.

523 Living Systems Analysis. Basic concepts and techniques of measurement processing and analysis of data from living systems, statistics, analysis of variance, regression analysis. Labs include blood flow data acquisition and analysis, implant biocorrosion testing, evaluation and analysis of cell proliferation and apoptosis. 3 credit hours.

535. Tissue Engineering. Principles underlying strategies for regenerative medicine such as stem-cell based therapy, scaffold design, proteins or genes delivery, roles of extracellular matrix, cell-materials interactions, angiogenesis, tissue transplantation, mechanical stimulus and nanotechnology. Prereq: BME 210. 3 hours

542 Principles of Medical Imaging. Medical imaging modalities such as x-ray, CT, Nuclear imaging. Principles and physics of interaction of ionizing radiation with matter, bremsstrahlung, attenuation coefficients, compton scatter, nuclear disintegration of radionuclides and generation of medical radionuclides. 3 credit hours.

543 Medical Image Processing. A lab-based introduction to processing, analysis and display techniques for medical imaging. 3 credit hours.

546 Principles of MRI. Technical fundamentals of NMR imaging and applications. Governing physics, MR imaging techniques and clinical role of MR imaging. 3 credit hours.

550 Computational Neuroscience. Computational principles used by the nervous system. Topics include biophysics of axon and synapse, sensory coding with emphasis on vision and audition, planning and decision-making and synthesis of motor responses. Emphasis on a systems approach throughout. Simulations. 3 credit hours.

561 Bioelectric Phenomena. Quantitative methods in the electrophysiology of neural, cardiac and skeletal muscle systems. 3 credit hours.

562 Cardiac Electrophysiology. Semi-quantitative methods in cardiac electrophysiology. Analysis of the electrocardiogram, cellular dynamics, propagation in the heart including spiral waves, and the effect of electric fields on the heart. 3 credit hours.

571 Continuum Mechanics of Solids. Matrix and tensor mathematics, fundamentals of stress, momentum principles, Cauchy and Piola-Kirchoff stress tensors, static equilibrium, invariance, measures of strain, Lagrangian and Eulerian formulations, Green and Almansi strain, deformation gradient tensor, infinitesimal strain, constitutive equations, finite strain elasticity, strain energy methods, 2-D Elasticity, Airy Method, viscoelasticity, mechanical behavior of polymers. 3 credit hours.

580 Biomolecular Modeling: Principles and applications for biomolecular modeling: protein structure, molecular dynamics, force field, docking, electrostatics, biomolecular diffusion. Throughout the course, the students are offered hands-on exercises in molecular modeling tools and software. Co-req: BME 517 or the permission of Instructor. 3 credit hours.

601, 701. Seminars in Biomedical Engineering. Current topics in biomedical engineering technology and applications. Pass/Fail. 1 hour each.

616, 716. Instrumental Methods of Analyses. Techniques used to evaluate biomaterials: FTIR, AES/XPS, AFM/STM, electrochemical corrosion evaluations, and mechanical testing. 3 credit hours.

619 Advanced Biofluids. Bioelectric signals, transduction devices and processes; analog and digital signal processing; system response characteristics. 3 credit hours.

623, 723. Biocompatibility. Wound Healing. Study of principles of healing and methods to enhance, and clinical applications. 3 credit hours.

633, 733. Biomechanics: Tissue Mechanics I Fundamentals of hard and soft tissue mechanics. Biomechanical problems, with emphasis on bone, ligament, tendon and cartilage. 3 credit hours.

637, 737. Biomechanics: Tissue Mechanics II . Advanced topics in tissue mechanics, including structure-function analysis and modeling of trabecular bone, biphasic theory for articular cartilage. 3 credit hours.

646/746 Biomedical Optics: Principle & Imaging. Fundamentals of light-matter interactions and principles of biomedical optics imaging techniques, such as light spectroscopy, light microscopy, confocal microscopy, multi-photon microscopy, optical coherence tomography, photoacoustic tomography, etc.  3 credit hours.

647, 747. Medical Imaging: Advanced MRI and fMRI. Advanced MRI techniques, functional MRI methods including spectroscopy, perfusion and diffusion imaging. 3 credit hours.

664, 764. Neural Computation. The principal theoretical underpinnings of computation in neural networks, understanding the relationship between the different approaches: dynamical systems, statistical mechanics, logic, Kalman filters, and likelihood/Bayesian estimation. 3 credit hours.

665, 765. Computational Vision. Study of biological and artificial vision from a theoretical perspective. Begins with a comparative survey of visual systems and examines vision algorithms and architectures. 3 credit hours.

670, 770. Quantitative Physiology. Study of physiological problems using advanced mathematical techniques. Topics covered include: mechanics, fluid dynamics, transport, electrophysiology of cell membranes, and control systems. Prereq: BME 517 OR ME 567. 3 credit hours.

676, 776 Fracture Mechanics. Linear elastic mechanics, Griffin energy balance, Airy & Westergaard solutions, elastic-plastic fracture mechanics, materials testing and applications. 3 credit hours.

691, 791 Special Topics in (Area). Course syllabus and grading policy required. 1-6 hours.

693, 793 Internship in BME. Course syllabus and grading policy required. 1-6 hours.

697 Journal Club in (Area). 1 hour each.

698. Non-thesis Research. Pass/Fail, 1-12 hours.

699. Thesis Research. Prerequisite: Admission to candidacy. Pass/Fail. 1-12 hours.

706. Introduction to Biomedical Instrumentation. Instrumentation used in measurement of physiological parameters. Prerequisites: EE 351. 3 credit hours.

707 Biomedical Instrumentation and Signal Processing I, II. Bioelectric signals, transduction devices and processes, analog and digital signal processing, system response characteristics. Prerequisite: BME 630. 3 hours each.

798. Non-dissertation Research. Pass/Fail. 1-12 hours.

799. Dissertation Research. Prerequisite: Admission to candidacy. Pass/Fail. 1-12 hours.

Last modified 07/27/2011