Event Recap: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 8TH ANNUAL ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE SYMPOSIUM
On Thursday, February 22, the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science and Columbia University Irving Medical Center joined Columbia Biomedical Engineering Department to host the 8th Annual Engineering in Medicine Symposium, bringing together researchers across academia, healthcare, industry and government to discuss impactful research at the interface of engineering and medicine.
Opening remarks from the Dean of Columbia Engineering, Dr. Shi-Fu Chang, and CEO of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Katrina Armstrong, emphasized the unique energy that exists around biomedical engineering, particularly at Columbia University. The cross-disciplinary nature of the field brings together biomedical science, engineering and medicine and Columbia University has built an environment to foster collaboration and growth–evidenced by the highest abundance of joint appointments across departments in the engineering and medical schools, and the rapidly expanding number of faculty and students in BME despite being the youngest of the Engineering departments.
This symposium featured exciting talks from speakers across disciplines, with sessions in Neuroscience & Biomedical Imaging, Cancer & Genomics, Tissue Engineering and Biomechanics that highlighted the many existing collaborations at Columbia and offered an opportunity to generate new partnerships. See the symposium program for a full list of speakers and topics here!
The day culminated in a poster session that displayed the breadth and depth of exciting research being done at the university at the intersection of engineering and health. Weihang Zhang from the Ke Cheng lab won Best Poster for her work “Inhalable Bio-adhesive Hydrogel for Enhanced Lung-mucus Penetration (Bio-HELP)”, with second place awarded to Cameron Park of the Elham Azizi lab and third to Sarah Bortel of the Santiago Correa lab. Thank you to all speakers, session chairs, the planning committee, poster judges, event staff and volunteers for making this symposium possible for the eighth year. Learn more about Columbia Engineering and Columbia University Irving Medical Center here, and make sure to join us in 2025 for the next Engineering in Medicine Symposium!