{"id":961,"date":"2011-09-15T09:31:07","date_gmt":"2011-09-15T13:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=961"},"modified":"2017-08-02T09:34:11","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T13:34:11","slug":"biomedical-engineering-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2011\/09\/biomedical-engineering-50\/","title":{"rendered":"Biomedical Engineering at 50"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"bme-50\"<\/a>
As the first Chair of Biomedical Engineering at Hopkins, the School of Medicine’s Dick Johns started with five faculty members and 15 graduate students. (Photo: Mike Ciesielski)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even as a teenager, Roger Hajjar ’86 thought big, \u2028and those grand thoughts brought him to Johns Hopkins in the early 1980s.<\/p>\n

Planning on a career in medicine, Hajjar chose Johns Hopkins’ Biomedical Engineering program based on its stellar national reputation and perennial No. 1 ranking<\/a>. While just a decade old at the time, the undergraduate BME program at Homewood was built upon 20 years of groundbreaking work by School of Medicine faculty-work that essentially gave birth to the field.<\/p>\n

“I knew Johns Hopkins was a big player,” says Hajjar, a heart failure specialist who is now research director of the Wiener Family Cardiovascular Research Laboratories at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and the founder of several successful startup companies. “They offered a superior learning environment and the academic rigor I was after.”<\/p>\n

For decades now, the Biomedical Engineering Department has attracted the best and brightest, like Hajjar, from the United States and abroad.<\/p>\n

The department traces its roots to the 1950s and Samuel Talbot.<\/p>\n

Talbot, who earned his doctorate in physics from Harvard, joined the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to continue his work in biophysics. In his lab, Talbot fabricated devices that could measure the electrical potential in muscle fibers and the human heart. He also advanced physiological optics, including the invention of the optic stimulator to observe retinal cells and neurons. His pioneering work would lead the Department of Medicine to create a biophysical division to produce more clinical tools.<\/p>\n

In the 1950s, Johns Hopkins doctors and scientists developed the first cardiac defibrillator, based on the work of School of Engineering dean and electrical engineer William B. Kouwenhoven. Realizing the potential for even more advances, Talbot championed the creation of a biomedical engineering division, launched in 1962 as part of the Department of Medicine.<\/p>\n

In 1965, Talbot departed for the University of Alabama to start a new biomedical engineering program there. A committee, led by famed neuroscientist Vernon Mountcastle and Department of Medicine chair A. McGehee (“Mac”) Harvey, recommended that the school look for a successor to Talbot and create an independent biomedical department.<\/p>\n

The university tapped Dick Johns (Med ’48), who joined Johns Hopkins in the 1950s and had worked alongside Talbot as a medical student and later became the first professor and chairman of the new sub-department of biomedical engineering. It started out with five faculty and 15 graduate students.<\/p>\n

In 1970, biomedical engineering became a full and separate department in the School of Medicine, and Johns was named its founding director. A full-time undergraduate program in biomedical engineering would go on to be introduced on the Homewood campus, one of the first programs of its kind in the nation. The program was championed by Moise H. Goldstein Jr. and Stanley Corrsin, a pioneer of fluid mechanics who had previously chaired the Department of Mechanical Engineering.<\/p>\n

Under Johns’ leadership, the department would expand to encompass research in speech and hearing, cardiovascular control, and myocardial mechanics. In \u2028his own research, Johns helped develop a 3-D radiography system that would give physicians a “real” image and allow for structures behind dense organs to be observed; it proved revolutionary.<\/p>\n

“From the beginning, the essence of what we do is combine quantitative physics and math to solve real-world biomedical problems,” says Johns today.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Sach_BME50\"<\/a>
Murray Sachs, who served as director of Biomedical Engineering from 1991 to 2007, says the key to the department’s success has been its interdisciplinary nature. (Photo by Bill Dennison)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the department’s first hires was Murray Sachs, who studied electrical engineering and auditory physiology. At Johns Hopkins, Sachs conducted important research on the encoding of sounds in the inner ear and the brain.<\/p>\n

Sachs said that Johns set the tone for the department’s success.<\/p>\n

“It was very exciting to be here at that time,” Sachs says. “Dick Johns made it exciting. He established a department in his own image: extreme collegiality. We never voted on anything; everything was decided by consensus on the basis of good, sound science.”<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, biomedical researchers at Johns Hopkins helped refine pacemaker technology when they invented the first implantable device that could be recharged inside the body. A decade later, researchers developed the first implantable defibrillator, a tiny device known today as an ICD, to help those with unpredictable and potentially fatal heartbeat irregularities.<\/p>\n

Roger Hajjar says he wanted to build upon this tradition of excellence.<\/p>\n

He studied with award-\u2028winning chemistry professor Ruth Aranow; Bill Hunter, internationally known for his research on heart contractions; and Kiichi Sagawa, the father of cardiac mechanics.<\/p>\n

“I was very proud to be working in [Dr. Sagawa’s] lab. I learned so much working with him. Johns Hopkins gave me the know-how and a foundation for my success. There was a lot of emphasis on critical thinking,” says Hajjar, who went on to earn his medical degree from Harvard before starting on his career in research on gene therapy for congenital heart failure.<\/p>\n

Sachs, who succeeded Johns from 1991 to 2007 and served as Massey Professor and director of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, says the key to the department’s success is its interdisciplinary nature.<\/p>\n

Today, the department has grown to more than 40 faculty members, 500 undergraduate students, and 230 graduate students. The master’s and undergraduate programs, combined, are the largest in the School of Engineering.<\/p>\n

Elliot R. McVeigh, the Massey Professor and director of Biomedical Engineering since 2007, notes that the department continues to make huge strides, especially in computation modeling. “We’ve done whole heart simulation from the cell up. We have developed MRI guided interventional procedures, and ways to deliver drugs and chemotherapy agents under image guidance.”<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, McVeigh says the department will continue to focus on the fundamental understanding of two of humankind’s great foes: cardiovascular disease and cancer. “We want to understand how these diseases develop and find interventions to eliminate them. Biomedical engineering will help us get there.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Biomedical Engineering celebrates its legacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-currents","issue-fall-2011"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBiomedical Engineering at 50 - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2011\/09\/biomedical-engineering-50\/\" \/>\n<link rel=\"next\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2011\/09\/biomedical-engineering-50\/2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Biomedical Engineering at 50 - 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