BME Diversity Statement
Our goal is to create a supportive environment in BME for historically underrepresented groups not limited to but including: ethnic and racial minorities, women, LGBTQIA+ individuals, people with disabilities, veterans, and people from diverse geographic and socio-economic backgrounds. We also value differences in knowledge and backgrounds including skill-set, education, age, experience, and perspectives. We are committed to encouraging and fostering a culture of diversity, equity and inclusion through continuously improving our recruitment, retention, climate, and community partnerships.
Welcome

Welcome to the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the School of Medicine at the Oregon Health & Science University. The department's research and teaching are focused on solving unmet clinical needs in the areas of cardiovascular and infectious diseases, rehabilitation medicine, and cancer.
BME consists of 35 primary faculty as well as joint and affiliate faculty from the Advanced Research Imaging Center, the OHSU Center for Spatial Systems Biomedicine (OCSSB), Casey Eye Institute, the Oregon Hearing Institute, and the Knight Cardiovascular and Cancer Centers. Read full welcome message.
BME News
- SOM Paper of the Month: “Modeling risk of hypoglycemia during and following physical activity in people with type 1 diabetes using explainable mixed-effects machine learning"
- Dr. Carolyn Schutt Ibsen is recognized with a CMBE Rising Star Award by the Biomedical Engineering Society.
- Dr. Karina Nakayama is awarded an R01 grant for "Regenerative engineering for complex extremity trauma" by NIH/NIAMS.
- Dr. Summer Gibbs is awarded an R43 grant in collaboration with her startup company, Trace Biosciences, for "Intraoperative Nerve Damage Assessment Using Nerve-Specific Fluorescence Guided Surgery" by NIH/NINDS.
- Dr. Summer Gibbs is awarded a grant in collaboration with Melissa Wong from OHSU CDBIO for "Noninvasive Quantification of Circulating Cancer Cells for Early Detection & Treatment Monitoring" by the Kuni Foundation.
- Dr. Peter Jacobs is awarded an R01 grant in collaboration with Melanie Gillingham for "The Natural History of LCHAD Retinopathy" by NIH via University of Pittsburgh.
- Dr. Summer Gibbs is awarded a fifth R01 grant for "Fluorescence guided surgery using near infrared nerve-specific probes for cranial nerve preservation" by NIH/NINDS.
- Victoria Duke, co-mentored by Drs. Karina Nakayama & Nick Willet, and Samantha Moellmer, co-mentored by Drs. Owen McCarty & Karina Nakayama, received Scholar Awards by ARCS Foundation of Oregon as First Year Scholars.
- Dr. Owen McCarty is deploying his alpine hiking prowess as a Leader of Impact for the American Heart Association's national health equity campaign.
- Victoria Duke, co-mentored by Drs. Karina Nakayama & Nick Willet, is appointed to the PORT (Portland Oral health Research Training) T90 training grant at OHSU.
- Dr. Karina Nakayama is awarded a grant for "Regenerative repair of traumatic bone-muscle injuries using IGF-1 patterned scaffolds and rehabilitation exercise" by the OHSU Medical Research Foundation.
- Drs. Joe Gray, Laura Heiser, Zuzana Tatarova, Dylan Blumberg, James Korkola, John Muschler, Pepper Schedin, Gordon Mills, and Lisa Coussens have been highlighted in several journals as a result of their research of anti-tumor environments created through synergistic relationships of cell tissues and targeted therapies.
- Dr. Daniel Zuckerman has been awarded an R01 grant for “Multiscale Characterization of a Unique Class of Duplex, Multivalent IDP systems”.
- Dr. Summer Gibbs is awarded an R01 grant for “Nerve-Specific Fluorophores for Improved Nerve Sparing during Prostatectomy using the Clinical Fluorescence Guided Surgery Infrastructure”.
- Dr. Tania Vu and collaborators have been awarded a U54 continuation for “Tumor Intrinsic and Microenvironmental Mechanisms Driving Drug Combination Efficacy and Resistance in AML”.
- Dr. Summer Gibbs is awarded an R21 grant for “White matter tract-specific near-infrared fluorescence probes for in vivo fluorescence guided white matter tractography”.
- Dr. Connor Barth, in collaboration with Dr. Summer Gibbs and startup company Trace Biosciences, is awarded an R43 grant for "Intraoperative Nerve Damage Assessment Using Nerve-Specific Fluorescence Guided Surgery".
- Dr. Wassana Yantasee has been awarded an R21 grant for “ROS-induced SPIO Targeted Platform for Transarterial Liver Cancer Therapy”.
- Dr. Summer Gibbs has been awarded an R44 grant for “Ultra-high content analyses of circulating and solid tumor cells: A diagnostic reference system for disease burden”.
- Dr. Summer Gibbs has been awarded an R01 grant for “Nerve-Specific Fluorophores for Improved Nerve Sparing during Prostatectomy using the Clinical Fluorescence Guided Surgery Infrastructure”.
- Dr. Monica Hinds has been awarded a contract related to the durability of shield stent coatings in vitro.
- Dr. Monica Hinds was awarded a contract for Inhibition of coagulation factor V (FV) in a baboon model for acute vascular graft thrombosis.
- Dr. Kyle Ellrott and collaborators awarded NIH U54 to support tool development in Bridge2AI program.
- Dr. Karina Nakayama has been recognized as a Top 50 Women Leaders in Oregon for 2022.
- Meghan Fallon has been awarded an F31 Grant for “Endothelial Function in Response to Topographical Micropatterning”.
- Hillary Le and Meghan Fallon have been awarded a 2022-23 N.L. Tartar Trust Fellowship grant.
- Dr. Summer Gibbs has been awarded an R21 grant for “A Novel Fluorescence Imaging Platform to Predict Response to Combinatorial Tyrosine Kinase Inhibitors”.
- Dr. Clara Mosquera-Lopez receives JDRF award to Develop AI-based digital twin technology with applications to physiology modeling in type 1 and type 2 diabetes
- Collaborators, including Dr. Summer Gibbs, find solution to common surgical problem of nerve damage
- Dr. Owen McCarty honored with the 2022 John A. Resko Excellence in Research and Mentoring Award
- Dr. Laura Heiser and collaborators receive OHSU Center for Women’s Health Circle of Giving Award
- Dr. Carolyn Ibsen receives Kuni Foundation Grant for Precision 3D-programmable Models for Breast Cancer Invasion
- Grad student Kylene Lowrey wins Poster Award at the 2022 Society for Biomaterials Meeting
- Laura Heiser, Ph.D., is using systems biology to uncloak cancer’s complexity
- Monica Hinds, Ph.D., elected to 2022 Class of the AIMBE College of Fellows
- Doctoral student Katie Blise is first author of a paper in Nature Precision Oncology
- Sandra Rugonyi, Ph.D. recognized for achievements in medical and biological engineering
- Laura Heiser, Ph.D. receives $1M from Kuni Foundation
- Catherine and James Galbraith receive $1M from W.M. Keck Foundation
BME News Archive
2021
- Congratulations to Joe Gray, Summer Gibbs, and Wassana Yantasee for being highlighted in the OHSU Innovates 2021 Impact Report!
- Jennifer Eng, Ph.D. won a podium presentation award for her talk, "Examining prognostic features of the breast tumor immune microenvironment with multiplex imaging" at the 2021 National Cancer Institute Cancer Systems Biology Consortium Junior Investigator Meeting
- Haylie Helms awarded T32 funding from the School of Dentistry for her project "Biophysical guidance of Osteogenesis"
- OHSU Racial Equity and Inclusion (REI) funding and BME department matching funds have been awarded to BME Researchers Clara Mosquera-Lopez/Peter Jacobs and Khanh Nguyen.
- Zheng Xia, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical engineering, describes in Nature Biotechnology a way to zero in on the subpopulations of cells within a tumor that are driving important disease behaviors.
- Peter Jacobs & Clara Mosquera-Lopez New grant awarded - OCTRI ‘IDEA Gap funding’ in collaboration with OHSU Dr. Peter Schulman of Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine & Stephen Heitner of Cytokinetics, Inc., ‘Development of a Novel Smart-Phone-Based Stethoscope Device that uses Machine Learning to Detect, Diagnose, and Determine the Severity of Cardiac and Pulmonary Disease”
- Monica Hinds New Grant award OCT21 – Dr. Monica Hinds awarded an R21 with Oasis Pharmaceuticals LLC “Lipid Receptor GPR31 as a Target for Anti Thrombotic and Stroke Therapy”
- Karina Nakayama New 'Junior Investigator Grant Award' OCT21 - "Repair of composite muscle-bone injury using decellularized muscle allografts and rehabilitative exercise"
- The Oregon Bioengineering Symposium takes place Nov. 11-12 | OHSU Now
- Owen McCarty elected as Biomedical Engineering Society Council of Chairs 'Long Range Planning Committee'
- OHSU startup selected for Pacific Northwest Startup Showcase | OHSU Now
- Congratulations to Rahul Narayan, a second-year PhD student mentored by Peter Jacobs in the AIMS lab who received the best paper (first place) award for the Diabetes Technology Society 2021 Student Research Award for his abstract titled ‘Predicting postprandial glucose excursions with macronutrient content using an interpretable random forest augmented by a digital twin ODE model’. He received a $1,000 cash award and free conference registration to the Diabetes Technology Meeting and the invitation to present his work on Saturday November 6 in a podium presentation during the conference.
- Clara Mosquera-Lopez New grant award (Jacobs Lab) SEP21 – “Development and Evaluation of Personalized Explainable Machine Learning Models to Predict and Prevent Nocturnal Hypoglycemia in Type 1 Diabetes”
Wassana Yantasee new grant award JUL21 – NIH SBIR in collaboration with Dr. Yantasee’s startup company PDX Pharmaceuticals “Novel Nano-immunotherapy for Treatment of Non-small Cell Lung Cancer” - Peter Jacobs new grant award SEP21 – U01 in collaboration with Dr. Coby Martin at Pennington Biomedical Research Center – Louisiana State University “A planning project to pilot test and optimize dietary approaches to slow aging and design a long-term trial”
- Caroline King's work on the the causes of death within 12 months after hospital discharge of opioid users was published by the Journal of Addiction Medicine
- Nick Calistri won a poster award at the recent NCI CSBC/PS-ON/BD-STEP Junior Investigator Meeting
- Jenny Eng won a podium award at the recent NCI CSBC/PS-ON/BD-STEP Junior Investigator Meeting
- Wassana Yantasee New grant award JUL21 – NIH SBIR in collaboration with Dr. Yantasee’s startup company PDX Pharmaceuticals “In Situ Tumor Vaccination with a Nano-oligo Therapeutic to Induce Whole-body Antitumor Immune Response”
- Summer Gibbs New grant award AUG21 (SBIR) in collaboration with both Dr. Michel Nederlof at Quantitative Imaging Systems & Dr. Missy Wong at OHSU “Ultra-high content analyses of circulating and solid tumor cells: A diagnostic reference system for disease burden”
- Monica Hinds New grant award JUL21 – R01 in collaboration with Dr. Luis Bertassoni “Micro engineering vascularized and innervated bone-like scaffolds as an alternative to autologous bone grafts”
- Novella Bates New grant award AUG21 – NRSA F31 Training Grant “The Role of Coagulation Factor XII in Medical Device-induced Thrombosis”
- Summer Gibbs New grant award AUG21 – New R01 “Nerve-Specific Fluorophores for Improved Nerve Sparing during Prostatectomy using the Clinical Fluorescence Guided Surgery Infrastructure”
- Monica Hinds New grant award AUG21 in collaboration with Dr. Rodefeld at the University of Indiana “Systematic examination of biomaterial surface modifications for cardiovascular device applications 'Fontan pump'”
- Summer Gibbs New grant award AUG21 - NSF Small Business Innovation Research Program awarded in collaboration with Dr. Gibb’s startup company Inherent Targeting “Near Infrared Nerve-Specific Fluorophores for Fluorescence-Guided Surgery”
- Summer Gibbs New grant award JUN21 – NIH R44 in collaboration with Dr. Gibbs startup company Inherent Targeting “Clinical Translation of Near Infrared Nerve-Specific Fluorophores for Nerve-sparing Prostatectomy“
- Peter Jacobs New grant award JUL21 – SBIR Phase II in collaboration with Dr. Jacob’s startup company PDT “Development of a miniaturized single-port automated insulin delivery system utilizing a glucose sensing catheter, ultra-concentrated insulin, and an optimized control algorithm”
- Ashley Anderson (Summer Gibbs/Missy Wong co-mentorship) New grant award JUL21 – T32 Training grant from Medical Scientist Training Program of Oregon Health & Science University
- Dr. Zuckerman has been awarded a 4 year renewal by the NSF (National Science Foundation). Research will focus on ‘Quantitative Exploration of Molecular Machine Mechanisms.’
- Dr. Nakayama was one of four selected recipients out of 14 for the Collins Medical Trust award. Research will focus on ‘Regenerative Skeletal Muscle Engineering using Patterned Scaffolds to Promote Healing of Adjacent Bone.’
- Congrats to BME student Tony Zheng for receiving an F30 Individual National Research Service Fellowship
- Dr. Jacobs was awarded an NIH R01 award. Research will focus on ‘Enabling Fully Automated Closed Loop Control in Type 1 Diabetes Through an Artificial Intelligence Meal Detection Algorithm and Pramlintide.’
- Dr. McCarty has received the inaugural Douglas Strain Professorship
- Dr. Zuckerman was awarded an NIH R01 award in coordination with OSU & U of O. Research will focus on 'Multiscale Characterization of a Unique Class of Duplex, Multivariant Intrinsically Disordered Proteins (IDP) Systems.'
- Congratulations to Kenton Gregory for leading a new project supported by BARDA
- BME student Nathan McMahon receieves OSA Student Paper Award
- Congratulations to Novella Bates and Stephanie Reitsma on their American Heart Association Predoctoral Fellowship award.
2020
- Caroline King, BME graduate student, is the winner of this year's Resko Award for Outstanding Dissertation.
- Congratulations to BME student Nichole Tyler for winning the 2021 award for Outstanding Journal Article by a Graduate Student
- BME student Tony Zheng and team receive Paper of the Month
- Pandemic ratchets up pressure on people with substance use disorder
- Dr. Clara Mosquera-Lopez awarded MRF New Investigator grant
- Congrats to BME student Gavin Young for receiving an F30 Individual National Research Service Fellowship
- Industry research sponsorship aims to expand education into translational research in diabetes
- Drs. Chang and Gibbs receive collaborative multi-PI National Institute of Cancer grant
- Jessica Riesterer named PNMS President and Erin Stempinski named PNMS Secretary
- Dr. Mitalipov and team find no adverse health effects of mitochondrial replacement therapy in monkeys
- Dr. Nakayama’s paper in Biomaterials Science selected as SOM’s Paper of the Month
- Jeremy Goecks, open science leader at OHSU, funded by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and NCI
- Congratulations to BME student John Russo for being selected for the Molecular Sciences Software Institute Seed Software Fellowship! Learn more about MoISSI
- BME students Erik Burlingame and Zeynep Sayar and team (Democratizing Digital Pathology) win 1st place in the Early Disease Detection track of the OHSU-MIT Hacking Medicine Invent-a-thon
- National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases R01 Awarded to BME Chair, Owen McCarty
July 2019
- See Onward magazine's recent profile of Kimberly Beatty, Ph.D.
- Dr. Laura Heiser has been appointed Vice Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering! Dr. Heiser succeeds Dr. Joe Gray, Gordon Moore Endowed Chair and Director of the OCSSB. Thank you, Dr. Gray, for your four years of service as vice chair. Congratulations, Dr. Heiser!
- BME graduate students Geoffrey Schau and Erik Burlingame competed in the InventOR Collegiate Challenge and won the $2,500 Impact Award for developing a new, less expensive way to detect cancer using artificial intelligence. Congratulations!
- Congratulations to Omkar Thaware, the inaugural recipient of Biomedical Engineering’s first Clinical Co-Mentorship Fellowship award. The award supports graduate student training and facilitates collaboration with physician-scientists to perform impactful translational research.
June 2019
- Congratulations to Summer Gibbs, Ph.D., awarded a new grant from Oregon Clinical & Translational Research Institute, June 25, 2019 for BIP Drug Discovery: Near Infrared (NIR) Nerve-Specific Probes Enable Improved Surgical Outcomes.
- Congratulations to Hong Ma, M.D., Ph.D., awarded the Basic Science Award for best poster presentation for her work entitled, Pathogenic mtDNA mutations are abundant in oocytes but eliminated during fetal development, at the 35th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.
May 2019
- Rohan Ahluwalia, Westview High School junior and AIMS Lab intern mentored by Peter Jacobs, Ph.D., won second place in biomedical engineering at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, for his project, A Novel Optical Diagnostic Method for Non-Invasive Detection of Blood Glucose Using Reverse Iontophoresis Modulation and Personalized Neural Networks. Preceding this, Rohan's project won the local and regional science fairs. Congratulations Rohan!
- Joe Gray, Ph.D., testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, at the invitation of Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, about the importance of international collaboration in scientific research. See OHSU Now article.
- Rebecca Williams has joined the BME support team as our new human resources coordinator. Welcome, Rebecca!
- Erica Hankins Regalo has joined the BME support team as our new graduate program coordinator. Welcome, Erica!
- Congratulations to Erik Burlingame and Geoffrey Schau from the Chang Lab for moving on to the final round in the InventOR Collegiate Challenge! They’re one of 22 teams to move onto the finals with their product SHIFT, an artificial intelligence-powered technology for detecting cancer. Finals will be held June 28th at Portland State University. Good luck!
- Congratulations to Owen McCarty, Ph.D., on a new grant, with Dr. Dr. Jonathan Lindner. The NIH Heart, Lung and Blood Institute award is for Molecular Imaging of Platelets and Oxidative Stress in Atherosclerosis.
- Congratulations to Wassana Yantasee, Ph.D., on her new grant awarded from OHSU Center for Women’s Health Circle of Giving for Development of new cancer vaccines for triple negative breast cancer.
- Congratulations to Owen McCarty, Ph.D., on his grant award renewal. NIH Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, awarded an R01 for Characterization of Coagulation of Factor-platelet Interactions: Role of FXI.
- The OHSU School of Medicine Alumni Association is now accepting applications for the 2019 Postdoctoral Paper of the Year Award. To apply, email alumni@ohsu.edu. Find more info and flyer on the Alumni Association's awards page, Recognize Excellence.
April 2019
- Congratulations to Peter Jacobs, PH.D., for his grant award from Jaeb Center for Health Research, for Exercise in Diabetes Initiative: The Effect of Exercise on Glycemic Control in Type 1 Diabetes (Main Study).
- Congratulations to Dr. Jenya Zilberman-Rudenko for receiving the 2019 Resko Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award.
- OHSU Research News: Dr. John Muschler awarded travel funds to showcase innovation in bladder cancer.
- Chemical & Engineering News highlighted BME Drs. Summer Gibbs and Lei Wang with their creation of new-infrared fluorophores. Congratulations, Dr. Gibbs and Dr. Wang!
January 2019
- Daniel Zuckerman, Ph.D., co-founds the open source, online only, Living Journal of Computational Molecular Science. See coverage in the press.
2018
11/07/2018
Hem-onc fellow lauded for effort to protect cancer patients from PICC thrombosis.
10/25/2018
Oregon Translational Chemical Biology Symposium to be held in KCRB on October 30th.
10/22/2018
OHSU startup receives FDA Fast Track designation for new blood clot treatment.
09/05/2018
New BME Publication - Patrick Jurney has paper published in Macromolecular Bioscience.
06/15/2018
Kimberly Beatty on the list of first recipients of new UO-OHSU seed funding.
06/08/2018
BME Spring Seminar - June 8 - Casey Greene, Ph.D.
05/31/2018
Matt Hagen awarded Canadian Biomaterials Society Travel Award, his abstract entitled Growth restrictive micropatterning enhances potential endothelial colony forming cell performance on cardiovascular biomaterials by lowering immunogenicity.
03/01/2018
OHSU BME Faculty receive AHA Institutional Undergrad Student Fellowship Award.
02/28/2018
OHSU Innovators Recognized at TTBD.
Graduate Program

The Biomedical Engineering graduate program serves as the center of innovation for the OHSU School of Medicine. Our mission is to train students to become innovators, entrepreneurs, and scientific leaders by graduate training in the development and use of measurement and data science platforms and novel devices to understand the (patho)physiology of human health and disease in order to develop therapeutic approaches and diagnostics to solve unmet clinical needs. Learn more.
Research Areas
