Courses Taught

BME 100S – First Year Undergraduate Seminar (Fall)

A first-year seminar designed for students interested in pursuing a career in Biomedical Engineering. Through a series of lectures, demonstrations and problem solving sessions, the multifaceted world of biomedical engineering will be explored. Students will be: 1) introduced to Penn State as an academic community, 2) acquainted with the learning tools and resources available at Penn State, 3) given an opportunity to develop relationships with full-time faculty and other students interested in Biomedical Engineering, 4) taught about their responsibilities as part of the University community, 5) engaged in discussion about Biomedical Engineering and possible career paths that are available to Biomedical Engineering graduates.

BME 313 – Biothermodynamics (Fall)

This course will provide an introduction to thermodynamics with specific emphasis on the fundamentals of material and energy balances that can be directly applied to the understanding of diverse biological problems. This course will cover equations of state, the first and second laws of thermodynamics in both open and closed systems, the Maxwell relationships, and chemical equilibriums. Specific biological applications discussed will apply thermodynamic principles to understand biological procedures such as thermoregulation and bioenergy metabolism. This course will include an introduction to molecular thermodynamics with discussion of topics such as membrane transfer, DNA melting and protein stability. This course also covers heat transfer including Fourier’s law of conduction. Biological examples of heat transfer that will be covered include thermoregulation and vessel-tissue heat transfer.

BME 450W – Senior Capstone Design (Spring)

This course is a culminating design experience where students will be presented with open-ended industry and clinically sponsored design projects related to biomedical engineering. Students will work in multi-disciplinary teams to effectively design and prototype a solution for the sponsor. Students will be required to do needs assessment, project planning, budget planning, formulation of design specifications, analysis of the design, and documentation of results. At the end of the semester, students will demonstrate their final design in a variety of formats that may include formal presentations, posters, websites, and written reports.

BIOE 597 – Engineering the Immune System (Fall)

The immune system is a complex coordination of cells, tissues and organs that are both essential to the homeostasis of human health and play central roles in disease. A key function of the immune system is to surveil foreign entities and remove them from the body. While fundamental for disease prevention, the immune system can also augment or degrade the function of engineered biotechnologies. This course employs interactive lectures and group assignments to cover the current understanding of how the immune system interfaces with biomedical devices, and explore important advances in immunotechnology. Topics include, the foreign body response, would healing, nanotechnology and the immune system, immunoengineering and stem cell technologies.