USF’s biomedical engineering program is getting new labs

*The seventh floor of the Interdisciplinary Sciences Building houses the Department of Medical Engineering, which will see upgrades by next year. ORACLE GRAPHIC/DEEYA PATEL*

When the Department of Medical Engineering opened at USF in 2017, it had just one faculty member and was open exclusively to graduate students.

Its biomedical engineering program grew little by little, leading up to an undergraduate senior class of five students walking the stage for the first time in May 2020.

Souheil Zekri, a biomedical engineering professor, said his senior capstone class alone has 42 students this year. Zekri said he is expecting 10 more students the following academic year.

But the increasing class sizes means the program is outgrowing its home, resulting in the need for expansions.

“We’re growing out of this lab,” Zekri said.

Robert Frisina, the chair of the medical engineering department, said around six new labs and a student engagement area will be created and existing student labs will be expanded by next year.

The seventh floor of the Interdisciplinary Sciences Building is shared between a few departments, including the medical engineering department, Cyber Florida and other offices.

The addition of new technology to existing labs will give students the opportunity to work closely with medical production through mechanical equipment, Zekri said.

Changes will bring new facilities for tissue engineering, stem cells, cell lines, molecular biology, anatomy, microscopy and a new 3D bioprinter to the program, Frisina said.

The “student engagement area” is designed to host “group project meetings, seminars and biomedical engineering student community building,” Frisina said.

Ryan Hughes, a USF spokesperson, said the expansion will have “minimal” disruptions to other departments.

A new teaching lab has already been added to the department, but the remaining changes rely on fundraising efforts, Frisina said.

Zekri said specifics about funding are “under wraps,” but will be available “sometime soon.”

The biomedical engineering program currently has 14 primary faculty members, with “dozens” of affiliate faculty, she said.

Three new faculty members will fill positions to run half of the new research labs.

Ross Turner is a graduate teaching assistant working toward his master’s in biomedical engineering. He said he is “interested” in what the expansion will bring.

“One of the things I’m most excited for is expanding the areas of medical engineering that the department has access to and lab strengths in,” Turner said.

Turner said the expansion of the department and the addition of new labs and equipment will give students “more space” to research, test and design their projects.

“A lot of times coming up with the tests is really hard, so having more specialized equipment that could put it into a more real environment would be very helpful,” Turner said.

Victoria Johnson is a biomedical engineering senior who is developing a non-invasive pressure sensor for chemotherapy patients in the senior capstone class.

“One really cool thing about biomedical engineering is that you’re doing engineering and then medicine,” Johnson said.

With the coming changes, Johnson said she feels the department will always be expanding, even if not physically.

“Biomedical engineering, I feel, is always growing and changing,” Johnson said. “There’s always new things and new medical research coming out.”