The accomplishments of five Biomedical Engineering Seniors were recognized at the Undergraduate Viterbi Awards ceremony.

Congratulations to the six BME seniors receiving USC Student Recognition awards!

Professor Kirk Shung was named today as a recipient of the 2008 Viterbi School Senior Research Award. Dr. Shung was cited as "one of the true pioneers of biomedical ultrasonics".

The 12th Annual Fred S. Grodins Symposium of graduate student research from the Viterbi School’s Department of Biomedical Engineering took place on April 5 at a new venue this year – the Galen Center. As in the past, this year’s event was organized by a committee of BME doctoral students selected by department chair Michael Khoo.

Dr. Valero-Cuevas traces precision hand manipulation skills to specialized neural circuits in the brain.

BME Professor Ted Berger, who holds the David Packard Chair in the Viterbi School of Engineering, also heads a blue-ribbon panel that recently published its final report assessing the state of the art in research and development of brain-computer interfaces.

Professor Mark Humayun (Ophthalmology & BME) has won election to the College of Fellows in the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. Dr. Humayun and other members of the Class of 2008 were nominated and approved by current members of the College, consisting of over 900 scientists and engineers.

Douglas Lauffenburger, the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor of Bioengineering and director of MIT’s Biological Engineering Division, presented the Viterbi School Department of Biomedical Engineering’s first Grodins Keynote Lecture on Oct. 26, 2007.

Ultrasound-based image-guided surgery A team of faculty from the Viterbi and Keck Schools led by Dr. Jesse Yen, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, has won a Zumberge Interdisciplinary Award for its proposed project entitled "Use of Ultrasound for Image-Guided Surgery". The other members of the team include Dr. Brent Liu, Associate Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering, and Dr. Shirin Towfigh, Assistant Professor of Surgery.

BME Professors Norberto Grzywacz and Bartlett Mel will lead a multidisciplinary team in a new $6 million NIH project to develop visual displays that will help patients with age-related macular degeneration, who suffer from significant vision loss. For more, see: http://viterbi.usc.edu/news/news/2007/usc-biomedical-team.htm

A multi-institution team led by Dr. Clara Lajonchere, Research Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, has received a five-year, $8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for an ambitious effort to survey the genetic, physical and behavioral profiles of children with autism. For more, see: http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/14313.html

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Ellis Meng, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, who has just been appointed to be the holder of the prestigious Viterbi Early Career Chair.

USC biomedical engineer grasps the importance of learning seemingly simple functions.

BME extends a very warm welcome to Dr. Francisco Valero-Cuevas, who joins us this Fall as Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Biokinesiology.

The university’s course catalogue will introduce a new minor to undergraduate engineering students this fall. The minor in Craniofacial and Dental Technology is an interdisciplinary collaboration among the School of Dentistry, the Department of Biomedical Engineering at USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering and USC College’s Department of Biological Sciences.