Our Strategic Vision
From the Chair
Duke BME was founded over 50 years ago, among the first programs of its kind. From its origins to the current era, Duke BME has remained a leader in the discoveries and innovations that have driven the field.
These bold advances, along with evolving career opportunities for our students, require transitions in BME education. Our broader community also has newly emerging and unresolved needs. All of this has led us to define new guiding principles and three strategic directions that will enable us to continue our leadership in the field for the future.
I am confident in our community, and I know Duke BME’s Strategic Vision will serve as a compass as we navigate our path forward.
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Dear Colleagues,
I am thrilled to share Duke Biomedical Engineering’s Strategic Vision! In August 2022, our department was tasked to develop a strategic vision comprising “tangible, descriptive, yet broad themes…that will define the future of your discipline.” To accomplish this, we convened a Strategic Visioning Committee consisting of BME faculty and staff to collect and distill information from our community about the state of the field of biomedical engineering now, and how we should steer our efforts to ensure our continued leadership for the future.
These efforts, which were skillfully led by Ann Saterbak, professor of the practice in BME, and Marc Sommer, professor of BME, consisted of an extensive series of focus groups, panel discussions, and solicitation of other forms of feedback from all department stakeholders.
This publication is a result of that intensive, years-long process.
Our vision is to harness the ingenuity of Duke BME students and faculty to redefine medicine. Our faculty have diversified and led the way in changing the field. Even as we have grown, however, we remain close as community through our shared goals. Our future builds on our established strengths. Duke BME was founded over 50 years ago, among the first programs of its kind. Our undergraduate program launched in 1967, the PhD program in 1969, and the department in 1971. We became the first ABET-accredited biomedical engineering program in the U.S. in 1972. Our department was created in large part through collaboration with forward-looking individuals in the Duke School of Medicine, and our continuing close relationships with physicians have empowered our research and training. The close proximity of Duke BME to the School of Medicine, along with our long-aligned and complementary interests and ambitions, allows a degree of interchange that is not possible at most other universities. From its origins to the current era, Duke BME has remained a leader in the discoveries and innovations that have driven the field.
Our researchers are pushing the boundaries of biomedical engineering using a host of innovative approaches from genetics to AI. These bold advances, along with evolving career opportunities for our students, require transitions in BME education. Our broader community also has newly emerging and unresolved needs. All of this has led us to define new guiding principles and three strategic directions that will enable us to continue our leadership in the field for the future. In this publication, you’ll learn more about how we’ll expand core BME research in five growing areas in the field, how we’ll use these five research directions to re-imagine BME education, and how we’ll strengthen and expand our community, both on and off Duke’s campus.
Everyone’s voice matters in defining our future, and we are fully determined to make the ideas presented in our strategic vision a reality. We know this will be a challenge, just as we know it will be critical to amplify why our work is vital and to energize societal support for our discipline. But I am confident in our community, and I know Duke BME’s Strategic Vision will serve as a compass as we navigate our path forward.
I hope you enjoy.
Sharon Gerecht, PhD
Paul M. Gross Distinguished Professor
Chair, Duke Biomedical Engineering
As biomedical engineers, our unique mission is to create new knowledge at the interface between engineering and biomedical science.
We engage motivated and talented students in the classroom, laboratory, and clinic to prepare them for future careers as effective, knowledgeable, and ethical leaders in public service, industry, and academia.
Our community creates innovative technologies founded in biological advances for the improvement of human health, well-being, and medical care.
Together, with medical researchers and patients both locally and globally, we identify important problems that impact human health and solve them using our technical expertise.
The Evolving Landscape
The disciplinary landscape of BME is in a state of transition. Historically rooted in traditional areas of engineering, it now incorporates a more comprehensive range of disciplines including computational sciences, materials science, genomics, complex biologics, and neuroscience. This shift is catalyzing a transition from conventional diagnostic and therapeutic techniques toward newer focuses on precision-targeted therapies and preventive health care paradigms. The field is moving toward a future where integrated, intelligent systems provide real-time, personalized health information and interventions, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in medical science and health provision.
To be effective leaders, biomedical engineers recognize their role in tackling a host of grand challenges, some of which include the global burden of disease and aging populations, climate change-induced health risks, pandemics, and health inequities. Duke BME seeks to address these challenges through innovations such as wearable medical devices, biomedical imaging and diagnostic tools, nanomedicine, and AI applications in health care, to name a few.
The increasing incorporation of digital health technologies, remote health care, and telemedicine are reshaping the business landscape and creating opportunities for public-private partnerships. These developments have also heightened the importance of data privacy, security, and ethics, which in turn attracts regulatory scrutiny and policy implications.
The changing landscape underscores the need for biomedical engineers to embrace a holistic, patient-centric approach that considers the broader societal, ethical, and regulatory implications of their work.
We aim to serve society by improving human health through advances in basic science, preventative medicine, and clinical care.
Biomedical engineering is a rapidly evolving field that bridges the knowledge gap between the microscopic worlds of biology and the macroscopic needs of medicine, using innovative applications of engineering, computing, and physics.
Enhancing Core BME Research
Our community values interdisciplinary innovation, and our vision for the future involves enhancing core BME research in five significant areas:
- Complex biologics
- Digital health and medicine
- Health disparities
- Neuroengineering
- Biomedical imaging
Re-Imagining BME Education
While maintaining our current high standards of education with active learning and experiential learning, we envision an improved program that acknowledges the changing priorities of our students, academia, and industry. To meet these goals, we will focus on:
- Intensive training in character, ethics, leadership, and professional skills
- Broad and deep integration of engineering design and manufacturing
- Synergies between tried-and-true teaching paradigms and AI-assisted classroom and lab experiences
- Approaches that acknowledge and benefit from the breadth of our student experiences
- Concentrations of industry-focused curricular paths that merit every student’s investment of cost and time
Strengthen and Expand Our BME Community
The elements of our vision will be realized by an ever-growing community of people who work with, learn from, and support each other. A major goal is to shift our attention outward to establish a more extended Duke BME family. We intend to enhance our collaborations within and outside our existing community to support research, education, service, and professional development by:
- Building a BME department that prioritizes inclusive excellence
- Increasing research collaborations within Duke
- Enhancing interactions with industry
- Enhancing outreach activities through partnerships with local schools
- Expanding connections across our global community
1. Reinforce our five core research areas with the people and resources they require.
Our recent and current faculty searches are well aligned with the five research directions representing our consensus on the future of biomedical engineering, and our proposals for future faculty searches will also concentrate on these areas.
2. Empower teaching in BME to always stay current, inspiring, and inventive.
Our future faculty hiring priorities will help to bolster our discipline-leading, teaching-focused faculty contingent with broad and deep teaching capabilities. In recent years, we have also rolled out major curricular updates to keep our courses aligned with the fast-paced realm
of biotechnology.
3. Nurture an expanded BME community in which research, education, and quality of live thrive.
Our vision will only be realized if our ever-growing community continues to work with, learn from, and support each other. By shifting our attention beyond the borders of Duke, we hope to establish a more global and inclusive community where exciting new ideas are supported and shared.
Strategic Visioning
Committee Membership
Co-Chairs
- Ann Saterbak, Professor of the Practice
- Marc Sommer, Professor
Members
- Matt Brown, BME Teaching Laboratory Manager
- Jessilyn Dunn, Associate Professor
- Danielle Giles, BME Assistant Director of Graduate Studies
- Michaela Martinez, BME Senior Communications Specialist
- Amanda Randles, Associate Professor
- Eric Richardson, Professor of the Practice
- Jonathan Viventi, Hawkins Family Associate Professor
- Junjie Yao, Jeffrey N. Vinik Associate Professor
- Lingchong You, James L. Meriam Distinguished Professor
Ex officio:
- Joseph Izatt, Former BME Chair and Michael J. Fitzpatrick Distinguished Professor
- Sharon Gerecht, BME Chair and Paul M. Gross Distinguished Professor