News
By Christina Crowe
Thirty years ago, Alan Eberhardt, Ph.D., joined UAB faculty as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering before moving over to the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering in 1999. Today he serves as Professor and Associate Chair of Education for the department and celebrates being named a recipient of the 2021 Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentorship.
Eberhardt will be recognized for his commitment to mentoring during a virtual ceremony on Monday, April 19. He was nominated by his graduate student John Easton, who has worked with Eberhardt in his lab for the past two years.
Read more: Eberhardt Wins 2021 Graduate Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentorship
By Hannah Weems
Sachin Budhathoki (right) is pictured with faculty advisor Palaniappan Sethu.Sachin Budhathoki, a third-year graduate student in the UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering, was awarded with a 2021 Blazer Way Award in the graduate student category on February 5 through a virtual announcement by Student Involvement.
Sachin Budhathoki (right) is pictured with faculty advisor Palaniappan Sethu.Budhathoki is pursuing his Ph.D. in the Tissue and Organ Chip Laboratory under Palaniappan Sethu, Ph.D., associate professor of biomedical engineering. He also works in the UAB Bill L. Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship as the Tech Transfer Research Fellow where he helps transfer UAB discoveries and inventions from bench to bedside. In 2020, he was the recipient of the UAB GSG Travel Grant.
Read more: BME graduate student Sachin Budhathoki receives Blazer Way Award
By Hannah Weems
John Easton pictured with Motogaitor EliteThe UAB Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) is known for routinely tackling daunting health problems head-on and has been doing so for more than forty years. In the community of people living with mobility impairments, affordability is one of the largest issues facing accessibility to therapeutic devices. It is no surprise, then, that UAB graduate students decided to directly combat this problem with the creation and development of a device called the “Motogaitor.”
This device is a motorized elliptical machine that was originally created and tested by Andres Guerrero in 2018 and has more recently been developed by graduate students in Biomedical Engineering, Ezz Abuhussein and John Easton, to treat a larger variety of patients on a budget and from home.
Written by Christina Crowe
Jianyi “Jay” Zhang, M.D., Ph.D.
The Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), a joint department in the School of Medicine and School of Engineering, ranked seventh in the nation in the Blue Ridge Institute's list of departments receiving funding from the National Institutes of Health in 2020. This marks the fifth year the department has ranked in the NIH’s top ten based on the Blue Ridge database. BME brought in $4,730,582 in NIH grant funding in 2020, a slight decrease from the previous year’s funding.
Read more: Biomedical Engineering ranks 7th in NIH funding for 2020
While this year has seen unprecedented challenges, it has also provided us with a chance to shine.
As you'll see in the stories included here, our students, faculty and staff have met this year's opportunities with adversity, creativity, tenacity and innovation. As always, we remain committed to educating the next generation of BME graduates for success in this transformative field, and to tackling some of the most daunting health problems facing our society.