Welcome

Welcome

On behalf of all our biomedical engineering student presenters at ASU, it is our pleasure to once again welcome you to our second all virtual and 30th Fall Biomedical Engineering Symposium! As was the case at the early beginnings of the biomedical engineering profession and which remains the case to date, ever growing unmet health care needs continue to fuel advancements in the field and its impact on the delivery of health care. So is the sustaining message of our SBHSE program and its graduates: the need for developing an adept, innovative and entrepreneurial health care technology workforce for the 21^st Century could not be greater. A testament to meeting this challenge is the impressive health care technology innovations proudly displayed by our biomedical engineering (BME) senior capstone design teams and masters applied project candidates that exemplify this SBHSE signature event. Also, once again, our BME juniors will be displaying the results of their newly acquired prototyping skills, and yet another milestone, as they progress through our BME design spine. These student achievements are a testimonial to the unyielding leadership support and external advisory board. Moreover, we could not achieve what you witness in this symposium without the continued support of our dedicated instructors, entrepreneurial clinical, industry and independent mentors, judges, graduate teaching assistants, facilitators, and professional staff. We sincerely thank all of you for contributing your time and expertise toward achieving this common goal.

We are fortunate to have this ever expanding BME community who, year in and year out, tirelessly support the development of the next generation of biomedical engineering researchers, design thinkers, product developers and innovators equipped with state-of-the-art skill sets, an entrepreneurial mindset and a rich and deepening culture of innovation at ASU. Now in its 6th consecutive year as the #1 leading culture of innovation in US universities, ASU continues to fuel the rapidly emerging entrepreneurial ecosystem in Arizona. At ASU, the culture of innovation within SBHSE’s longstanding biomedical engineering program continues to fuel its next generation of health care technology leaders to tackle even the most pressing of grand challenges in health care delivery in the 21st Century. Clear evidence of SBHSE’s entrepreneurial capacity building of the 21st Century workforce in health care technology is the continued fury of successes acclaimed by our biomedical engineering design teams in taking top honors in local, regional, national and international design competitions and the rapidly increasing number of patents filed, as well as the emergence of start-ups now becoming a reality.

SBHSE is also very proud to once again host a group of senior engineering Master Card Foundation Scholars from our global partner, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), in Kumasi, Ghana. Now, in its fourth year, KNUST engineering students spend their senior year and also their graduate masters studies at ASU, albeit this year it is necessarily a virtual experience but nonetheless enriches our program. In Biomedical Engineering, KNUST scholars further expand our diverse, multinational capstone teams and applied project cohort. The rich diversity that KNUST and all our international BME students continue to bring a unique and enriching global perspective as witnessed at this symposium and evidenced throughout our SBHSE program.

Lastly, now in its third year, SBHSE growing CBIG partnership with Creighton University’s third and fourth year entrepreneurial medical students, undergoing rotations at Dignity Health in Phoenix, who take precious time from their very busy clinical schedules to identify clinical unmet needs and serve as clinical mentors for this year’s SBHSE capstone design teams. These exceptional medical students continue to do an outstanding job mentoring our BME senior design students as evidenced by the quality of their innovative capstone projects. With the newly institutionalized ASU-Creighton University partnership now in place, SBHSE looks forward to expand our collective vision based upon our early success with this unique model to our evolving BME medical device global health innovation program.

On behalf of our BME presenting students and our dedicated staff and faculty, along with our affiliated colleagues and our clinical and industrial partners of the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering (SBHSE), we proudly present the Class of 2021 biomedical engineering innovators and their understudies at our second all virtual and 30^th continuous biomedical engineering symposium. Please ‘drop in’ from wherever you may be and join us in celebrating SBHSE’s Class of 2021 and their outstanding achievements. Do enjoy our 30th Fall BME Symposium!