The Biodesign Prototyping Studio now offers catheter and nitinol prototyping equipment in addition to many other brainstorming and prototyping resources. Student teams used the facility Fall quarter to create a wide range of well developed medical device prototypes. Please see the Collaboratory Website for more information.

Student from ME 394 grinds catheter material in Prototyping Studio

Project-Based Course Faculty Meeting
Meetings were held with faculty that currently teach project-based courses with a biomedical component. This included nine different courses offered through the departments of Mechanical Engineering, Medicine, Immunology, Neurosurgery, and Orthopedics. Efforts are currently underway to have these courses complement one another both in time and content. All of the courses have been documented on the Biodesign website as well. We hope that this will be a resource to our students.

Stanford Represented at BioMedical Engineering Society (BMES) Exhibit
This year, for the first time, Stanford University had a booth at the BMES conference in Philadelphia in October. We featured the Biodesign Innovation Fellowship, the new Bioengineering Department graduate program, and ME’s BME Division graduate program. In addition, we recruited students and faculty to participate in the bmesource portal (http://www.bmesource.org/). A large number of students stopped by to hear about the opportunities at Stanford in BME.

Biodesign Innovation Fellows Find Needs
The 2004-05 Biodesign Innovation Fellows: Shubhayu Basu, Corinne Bright, Ken Martin, and Henry Chen are actively sifting over 300 needs that they found during their first three months in the fellowship. Their next steps include brainstorming potential solutions/concepts and prototyping.

From the Innovator’s Workbench Series
We have confirmed dates for this coming year’s Innovators:

Further information about place and time will be forthcoming. If you have not yet done so, please join the Biodesign Network by registering at http://bdn.stanford.edu/ - select “become a member.” That way you’ll receive notices when registration is open for these events.

Surgical Innovation
Thomas Krummel (Emile Holman Professor of Surgery and Chairman of the Department of Surgery and the Susan B. Ford Surgeon-in-Chief at Packard Children's Hospital) is partnering with Biodesign to form the Surgical Innovation Program. In 2005-06 there will be two teams of Innovation Fellows, one focused on Cardiovascular Innovation and one on Surgical Innovation. Along with Dr. Krummel, Dr. Michael Gertner has joined the team to help manage the new initiative.

Innovation Course Crosslisted in Bioengineering, GSB
Biodesign’s course, Med 272 Biodesign Innovation, has recently gained crosslistings in both the Department of Bioengineering and the Graduate School of Business. This will mean students in either of those programs can sign up for Biodesign Innovation (BioE 374 or OIT 384) from any of four programs. This will be good for students who need credits either outside their programs or inside their programs. This brings the total to four crosslistings: Medicine, Mechanical Engineering, Bioengineering and Operations, Information & Technology(GSB).

FDA/CDRH Medical Device Fellowship
Ian Millett, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher from Applied Physics, is the second Stanford student who has been able to take advantage of Biodesign's new relationship with the FDA. Ian is currently spending six months in Washington DC with the Center for Devices and Radiologic Health.

This coming year we will again host a retreat for Biodesign Faculty (our last retreat was in 2003.) The event is planned for June 4 at the Schwab Center. Biodesign Faculty will be notified after the first of the year as to details of the event.

The following Stanford medical device technologies (selected) were licensed in 2004:

To learn more about Stanford medical device technologies available for licensing, visit the Office of Technology's searchable online database and click on the "medical devices" category. More than 130 technologies are currently posted.

For more information about the Biodesign Tech Transfer/Network Group's activities, please contact Sandra Miller. sjmiller@stanford.edu; 650.736.1162

October Meeting a Success
More than 70 faculty participants attended our day-long meeting in conjunction with the BMES conference in October, 2004. The agenda for the day included a lively discussion about ABET certification as well as breakout groups discussing: Entrepreneurial Literacy, Industry Needs and Student/Team Assessment. The material from the day has been posted on the BME-IDEA website.

Web Portal Gains Editors
As a result of the October meeting, we now have over 20 site editors enrolled in our medical device portal website http://bmesource.org/. The site editors, typically BME design course faculty, have the responsibility of introducing the portal to their students and collecting exemplary links from them to be included in the site. In addition, Section Editors, who maintain the integrity of the site’s links, were also recruited. Twenty-two names were suggested and those individuals are being contacted.

BME-IDEA Contest Now Open
The contest is in full swing – over 30 universities have signed-on to participate. The prize, to be awarded at the next BMES conference in October 2005, will be $10,000 and product development and commercialization resources, including recognition in Canon llc publications. Stanford has signed on to submit a project (only one team per school is allowed in this pilot year.) See the NCIIA website for further information.

SSB has been busy the first quarter of the academic year with several programs including a faculty dinner and work on the Biodesign resume book. See their website for further information.

Jeremy Johnson, Biodesign Innovation Fellow (03-04), has recently accepted a position with Medtronic Vascular in Santa Rosa.

Evan Anderson, Biodesign Innovation Fellow (03-04), recently completed a six-month fellowship at the FDA in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) and has just assumed a position as R&D Engineering with Guidant Corporation.

Jamie VanHoften, Biodesign alumna (Mechanical Engineering MS (01-02), began medical school this fall at UCSF. Jamie took the first medical device prototyping course (ME294, taught by Craig Milroy) in the fall of 1999, for which she was a TA in 2000. Upon graduation, Jamie worked in medical device start-up companies (Satiety, Fogarty Engineering) while taking pre-med coursework.

If you're a Stanford grad working in the biomedical technology/medical devices area, we want to hear from you! These are just a few resources available to Biodesign alumni:

1. Keep informed! Register as a member of the Biodesign Network (BDN) at http://bdn.stanford.edu. There is no fee and members can view a wealth of online resources, including the member database, job postings on the Opportunities page, news and events.
2. Find a job! Register as an alumni on the Biodesign Job Resource and view job postings targeted to the Stanford community. Go to: http://www.aftercollege.com/stanford/biodesign
3. Save money! Biodesign alumni will receive discounted rates when registering for Biodesign-organized events.

Department establishes national center for biological simulations
The National Institutes of Health has awarded $19.9 million over five years to Russ Altman, associate professor of Genetics and Bioengineering, and Scott Delp, associate professor and chair of Bioengineering, to establish and lead the National Center for Physics-Based Simulation of Biological Structures (SimBioS). The new center is charged with developing a simulation toolkit to enable scientists worldwide to model biological systems ranging from molecules to whole organisms.

Other Events of Interest

1/26/05 2005 Stanford Health Care Symposium (sponsored by GSB Health Care Club, the Graduate School of Business, McKinsey & Company and Lilly) Arrilaga Alumni Center Keynote Speakers: Mark McClellan, Administrator of the CMS and former FDA Commissioner; Bill Rastetter, Executive Chairman, Biogen Idec and featuring 18 panel and topic speakers: CEO's of Abgenix, Chemocentryx, Ciphergen, Cytokinetics, Protein Design Labs & Renovis; venture capitalists and health care investors; leading academics; policy makers. Meet the symposium speakers and representatives from over 20 companies at the afternoon wine and cheese reception. Book online at: http://www.acteva.com//booking.cfm?bevaID=77165