Winter 2018

2018 Winter BME in Practice Courses

Are you a freshman or sophomore interested in BME? Are you trying to understand what you can do with a BME degree? Are you ready to get started with your BME experience? Consider signing up for one or all of our 2018 Winter BME in Practice Courses. These 1-credit courses were created by your fellow students for you. Engage in hands on BME projects from 3D printing and prototype development to biological signaling in neural tissue, to computational modeling for drug development. These courses will expose students to being used today BME practice, including MATLAB, Autodesk Fusion 360, Labview, etc, while using them solve critical BME problems. These short 4-week modules will focus on one aspect of biomedical engineering and immerse you in the world of BME practice. Students can enroll in all 3 classes or just 1 to get a flavor of BME. Space will be limited (max 20 with waitlist).

Courses offered will be dependent on student interest! Vote for the modules that are most interesting to you by signing up for email notifications and voting for your top 3 modules. (All classes will be held in LBME)

BME499.011	Introduction to Neural Engineering and Modeling Pre-req: ENGR 101 (Introduction to Computers and Programming) and MATH 116 (Calculus II) or equivalents. Please contact the instructors prior to enrollment with any questions or concerns.	1/3/18-2/1/18 (NOTE: this class starts first day of classes)	M/W: 12:30-1:30 p.m. 1121 LBME Thur: 3:30-7:30 1105 LBME
BME499.040	Introduction to Medical Product Design, Prototyping and Testing	1/8/18-2/1/18	Tu/Thur: 9:30-12:30 EECS 2331
BME499.021	Computational Cell Signaling: Roadmap to Drug Development pre/co-reqs: MATH 216, Chem 13, & Biology 172, 174 or 195 (or equivalent)	2/5/18-3/8/18	M/W: 12:30-1:30 p.m. (Lec) 1121 LBME Thur: 3:30-7:30 1105 LBME
BME499.031	Building a Tumor, an Introduction to Tissue Engineering	3/12/18-4/5/18	M/W: 12:30-1:30 p.m. (Lec) 1121 LBME Thur: 3:30-7:30 1105 LBME
BME499	Introduction to Medical Product Design Iteration and Validation and/or Biomechanical Design and Rapid Prototyping pre-req/co-req: BME 231	3/12/18-4/5/18	TBD (will be confirmed in January)

Introduction to Neural Engineering and Modeling

Cyborgs! Mind control! Mind-controlled cyborgs!* Interested? If so, consider taking Introduction to Neural Engineering, where you will learn about the very modern world of technology that lives and talks with biology. This is an introductory experience intended for approximately sophomore-level students who are interested in the brain, particularly the intersection of technology and the nervous system. Students who are interested in developing technical skills focused on engineering programming and/or quantitative modeling are also encouraged to enroll.

So what exactly is a neural engineer and how can you become one? As the field of neural engineering grows in scientific output, media representation, and social popularity, there is more and more demand for exposure to an academic route that leads to this type of career. This 4-week, 1-credit course will give you a broad taste of neural engineering as a field, what it is, what it isn’t, what has been done in the last 50 years, and what is coming in the next few years in the exciting world of brain-computer interfacing. This will introduce students to the research and ethics of neural engineering, its clinical applications, and current field-wide problems.

Students will be guided through the implementation of models of neural recording and stimulation, as well as how to process and interpret relevant data sets using engineering software (MATLAB, COMSOL). By the end of the course students should understand the type of work and research opportunities in the field of neural engineering, and be comfortable with the contents of related technical skills to determine if they wish to pursue a neural engineering curricular focus and future career.

Pre-Req: ENGR 101 (Introduction to Computers and Programming) and MATH 116 (Calculus II) or equivalents. Please contact the instructors prior to enrollment with any questions or concerns.

*Disclaimer: There will be no mind-controlled cyborgs in this course. Sorry.

Building a Tumor, an Introduction to Tissue Engineering

Cancer has made a name for itself as one of the world’s most feared diseases. In order to better understand this disease, one must first understand how changes to a cell’s microenvironment influence the behavior of that cell. In this introductory course, students will be exposed to the basic concepts of tissue engineering. They will explore the various components of a cellular microenvironment and gain an understanding of how these components work together to influence cell morphology and phenotype. Students will also have the chance to see these concepts at work outside of the classroom by designing and engineering various hydrogels to be used as cellular scaffolds. They will develop laboratory skills in cell culture and cellular encapsulation in 3D hydrogels, and they will learn how to evaluate the effectiveness of their scaffolds by imaging the cells within them. Students will then design their own scaffolds and study how cancer cells proliferate and migrate within them.

Introduction to Medical Product Design Iteration and Validation

This introductory course will engage students in the design process. The purpose of the course is to support students in both the iterative steps of design and the practice of making informed decisions throughout the development of a product. In the development of a product, the iterative system helps to find problems with the product quickly. When this is applied early on in the development phase, it can help save significant time and money. Similar to an entry level position in industry and research, students will acquire a project that is not quite finished. Students will be utilizing previous senior design projects to further improve the products’ outcomes. Students will gain experience in 1) identifying potential weaknesses of a current design, 2) creating testing protocols to quantifiably understand these weaknesses, and 3) making informed design changes through testing results.

Introduction to Medical Product Design, Prototyping and Testing (previously titled: Design “Crash” Course: Computer-Aided Design, Rapid Prototyping, and Failure Analysis)

Introduction to Medical Product Design is a four-week design course in which students learn how to apply computer-aided design, finite-element analysis, 3D printing, and physical testing to solve a biomedical design project. Students gain exposure to the design process and add fundamental engineering skills to their design toolbox. The primary focus of this class is to teach students to apply the design process to create a biomedical product. The design project will be open-ended, but include design constraints as it is in the real world. The main purpose of this class is to make a lot of mistakes and learn from them now! Making more mistakes sooner will give students the confidence that they can be real engineers in the future.

This course will provide active, hands-on experiences to promote engagement and learning by the students. Classes will be lab-based, with less lecture-based instruction and more hands-on opportunities to learn the material with guidance from instructors, GSIs, and peers. The labs will provide software tutorials and general instruction by the instructors, followed by time for students to actively learn the software packages and work on their design projects.

Biomechanical Design and Rapid Prototyping

If you are interested in the real-world techniques used by medical device design engineers to conceptualize, design, document, and prototype devices, take this opportunity to enroll in the Biomechanical Design and Rapid Prototyping section of BME 250. This one-credit, four-week mini-course will familiarize you with the principles and techniques of computer-aided design (CAD) in the context of biomechanics using AutoDesk’s newest and most ambitious design software, Fusion 360. This course emerged from the Fall 2017 BME Instructional Incubator, and is designed to prepare sophomore BME students with skills and knowledge that are up to date with the constantly changing landscape of biomedical engineering. Students will learn fundamental principles and techniques of AutoDesk’s Fusion 360 CAD software, FEA simulations, 3D printing, and the applications of these skills in a biomechanical and design context. These are the sort of skills often employed by medical device design engineers in industry settings. Students will get an introduction into the principles of design such as tolerances, criteria implementation, engineering drawings, assembly, top-down vs. bottom-up design, and simulated testing analysis. During a weekly four-hour lab section, students will complete individual assignments based on biomechanical examples drawn from BME 231, and will also engage in active, collaborative work to produce a final class project: a 3D-printed prototype. The skills and knowledge gained in this course will prepare students well for future design courses and will be beneficial in their professional careers. Prior or concurrent enrollment in BME 231 is required.

Computational Cell Signaling: Roadmap to Drug Development

Current techniques used to discover new drugs involve random screening of individual compounds of interest to evaluate desired effects in cell culture experiments, animal models, and eventually human clinical trials. These techniques are both costly and inefficient, with less than 8% of drugs reaching the market in 14 years and estimated costs over $90 million per drug (Dimasi, Hansen, and Grabowski, 2003). Currently about 40% of all prescription pharmaceuticals on the market target G-protein signaling pathways (Filmore 2004).

Computational models of cell signaling pathways have the potential to contribute great insight into drug development by providing a platform for hypothesis-testing that is both time-efficient and low-cost. In this course, students will learn about common signaling pathways and how to model G-protein signaling pathways computationally using systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) evaluated numerically in MATLAB. Emphasis will be placed on understanding how computational models highlight results that are biologically non-intuitive, and can thus help biomedical engineers change the face of drug development.

In the experiential final project, students will integrate the biological knowledge and coding skills they gained throughout the course. In this project, students will work in teams to investigate the sensitivity of a particular targeted cell signaling pathway with the goal of elucidating key features useful for drug development. Group deliverables for the final project include a small write up on the results as well as a short presentation. Students will also be briefly exposed to how modeling is used in different concentrations within the BME curriculum at U-M and how biomedical engineers use these modeling skills in their careers.

pre/co-reqs: MATH 216, Chem 13, & Biology 172, 174 or 195 (or equivalent)

DiMasi, Joseph A., Ronald W. Hansen, and Henry G. Grabowski. 2003. The Price of Innovation: New Estimates of Drug Development Costs. Journal of Health Economics 22(2): 151–85.

Filmore, David. 2004. It’s a GPCR World. Modern Drug Discovery 7(11): 24-28.