Bioengineering

Stay in the know with the Bioengineering Shared Calendar

Keeping track of key departmental events just got a lot easier!

Bioengineering has launched a new shared calendar as a go-to planning resource for staff to stay informed and improve coordination across the department. The live calendar has seven categories you can filter to find the events that matter to you:

• 🎟️ Department Events, including Department Seminars, the Annual Bioengineering Lecture, staff and student socials, Away Days, and more.
• 🏫 Academic Staff Meetings: the monthly meeting specifically for academic staff.
• 👥 Professional & Technical Staff Meetings: dedicated professional and technical staff meetings.
• 👩🏻‍🏫 Teaching-Related: events related to teaching activities or exams
• 📅 Ad Hoc Meetings: one-off departmental meetings.
• 🚀 Admissions & Outreach, including Open days, applicant visits, outreach activities and more.
• ℹ️ Imperial College Events: University-wide events relevant to Bioengineering staff.

You can find the link to the calendar and instructions on how to add it to your Outlook account on our Information for Staff pages.

The calendar won’t send reminders, but it’s a great way to avoid scheduling conflicts and stay updated.

If you want an event included on the calendar, please email Kemi. However, as this is a high-level official calendar that we’re trying to keep streamlined, not every event will make the cut!

Join the Fostering Connections project

Imperial Experience is the university’s strategy to deliver a holistic student experience. As part of this, an investigative report highlighted the important role of community building initiatives to support diverse and inclusive student engagement and enhance the student experience.

Research into initiatives to support community building and the international student experience at other UK Higher Education institutions uncovered several initiatives to encourage connections within a diverse student body.

You will have the opportunity to gain experience working in student experience, community building, and communications, contribute to a unique initiative that celebrates the global campus community, and work with a diverse group of students and staff.

We welcome students from any department or Faculty, in any year of study, including international students. To express your interest, please complete the form on the StudentShapers webpage by Sunday 30 March 2025. If you have any questions or queries, do not hesitate to get in touch.

Read News You Can Use: Spring 2025 in full

When you think of big data you probably think of powerful computers crunching numbers, not a brain biosensor. Tonight the lead story on the BBC Bang goes the Theory episode on Big Data is about the traumatic brain injury research by Professor Martyn Boutelle in the Department of Bioengineering, here at Imperial.

Here’s this link to a preview clip of tonight’s episode which gives you a taste of what is in store for tonight’s episode.

If you’re interested in finding out more about the science and engineering behind the biosensors, I would recommend this paper written by Professor Martyn Boutelle and Dr Michelle Rogers about “Real-Time Clinical Monitoring of Biomolecules”  and how continuous monitoring of clinical biomarkers offers the exciting possibility of new therapies that use biomarker levels to guide treatment in real time. The review considers measurements in body fluids by a range of analytical methods and discusses direct tissue measurements performed by implanted sensors; sampling techniques, including microdialysis and ultrafiltration; and noninvasive methods.

The monitoring kit is now in the intensive care unit

Check out the Department of Bioengineering Facebook page, for a sneak preview of photos behind the scenes.

Read Bang goes big data in full

I have now finished my first week of the US bioengineering trip. This post is a synopsis of what I have learnt so far.

1. The UK and the USA landscape of bioengineering isn’t as different as I had expected.

2. There is heterogeneity in the bioengineering departments, with different Departments focusing on different aspects of bioengineering. Most interestingly on this front was the different meaning of bioengineering to each institution, sometimes subtle other times less so in the case of MIT where they have taken a unique approach to biological engineering.

3. Invention, innovation and design are all growing areas of interest in bioengineering education out here. My meetings with Michael Cima at MIT and Youseph Yazdi at Johns Hopkins particularly highlighted this. It is an area that Imperial are up there with alongside the american institutions with the MRes in Medical Device Design and Entrepreneurship which Professor James Moore launched in October 2013.

4. Impact, the buzz word of 2013 is also big in the US, although they generally refer to it as ‘broader impact’. As in the UK the funders, particularly the NSF, are now providing grants for outreach as part of research.

5. Industry perception, although I think generally US awareness of bioengineering is higher than that of the UK there is still work to be done in industry. Particularly industry perception of the skillset of bioengineers vs. mechanical or electrical and electronic engineers. I am looking forward to working on this survey with some of my new US contacts that I have met with during this trip.

Overall my views of the future growth of the discipline have only been encouraged through this trip. I have met many inspirational individuals on the trip so far who are leading the discipline academically and innovatively, and I feel very privileged to have had the honour to meet them all.

Special thanks to:
Professor Doug Lauffenburger, MIT
Professor Roger Kamm, MIT
Professor Ron Weiss, MIT
Daniel Darling, MIT
Professor Scott Manalis, MIT
Dr Agi Stachowiak, MIT
Dr Natalie Kuldell, MIT
Professor Michael Cima, MIT

Professor Solomon Eisenberg, Boston University

Professor Sandra Shefelbine, Northeastern University
Claire Duggan, Northeastern University
Karen Kelley, Northeastern University

Professor Clark Hung, Columbia University

Doug Beizer, Biomedical Engineering Society

Dr Karen Borgsmiller, Johns Hopkins University
Christine Newman, Johns Hopkins University
Alisha Sparks, Johns Hopkins University
Professor Youseph Yazdi, Johns Hopkins University

…not a bad first week 🙂

Read From East to West in full