Fall 2006 Newsletter

Pitt Bioengineering Receives Three T32 Grants Simultaneously

Part 1 of 3: Dr. Sanjeev Shroff Awarded Training Grant to Educate Students on Cardiovascular and Biomedical Research

Under the leadership of Sanjeev G. Shroff, Professor and Gerald McGinnis Chair in Bioengineering, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded the University of Pittsburgh Department of Bioengineering a five-year T32 pre-doctoral training grant.

The aim of the grant is to educate students from engineering and other quantitative sciences for careers in biomedical research in the cardiovascular area. There are three focus areas of this program:

• Basic understanding and quantitative characterization of native (normal and pathological conditions) and perturbed (i.e., with deployment of man-made devices or constructs) cardiovascular function at various levels of organization (cell, tissue, whole organ);
• imaging for functional assessment at various levels of organization (cell, tissue, whole organ); and
• design and optimization of artificial devices and constructs (mechanical, tissue-engineered, and hybrid).

About the Program

Students are drawn mainly from engineering, although they may also come from biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Program course work (12 didactic courses and several workshops) is designed to provide both breadth and depth in engineering and biological sciences and also includes a formal exposure to biostatistics, bioethics, and professional and career development issues. One novel aspect of the program is that students are required to formally participate in a clinical experience through a clinical internship and rotation. Finally, each student receives extensive research training in the laboratories of the training faculty. Annually, the program will support eight students who are pursuing a doctoral degree in bioengineering with a focus on cardiovascular research.

The new program is interdisciplinary and interdepartmental in nature. Although the Department of Bioengineering forms the core, the training faculty is drawn from a number of departments, including cell biology and physiology, cardiology, critical care medicine, pediatrics, surgery (cardio-thoracic and vascular), and radiology. The participating faculty members are bioengineers, physiologists, biophysicists, cell and molecular biologists, adult and pediatric cardiologists, cardio-thoracic surgeons, and critical care specialists, all of whom have vigorous and well-funded research programs.

Leading the Way

The University has been at the forefront of education and research in this field, with two key components contributing to this status. First, Pitt students are exposed first-hand to actual clinical problems requiring bioengineering input for their solution within various medical disciplines (e.g., cardiology, cardio-thoracic surgery, vascular surgery, radiology). Second, there has been, and continues to be, a significant commitment at the university level to these research and educational endeavors.

Additional program information can be obtained by contacting Sanjeev Shroff at .