Proposal

Narrative

To provide a state-of-the-art Teaching Bioengineering Lab, one more instrument is required for “Live” study of cellular activities of cells (normal, immune, stem and cancer). The funding of this project will help to establish Bioengineering Teaching Lab for MS Bioengineering and future Bachelor’s Bioengineering program. For the past 7 years this has been the most common request by students when completing the end of semester “Student Perception of Teaching (SPOT) survey for the Bioengineering courses. This will bring novel technologies which will be beneficial to bioengineering students from different Engineering areas and Life Science -including graduates and undergraduates. • Introduction to Bioengineering (BME 5000), which is a core-course; • Tissue Engineering (BME 6334); • Stem Cell Engineering (BME 6324), and • Introduction to Bioengineering for High school young talents (EGN 1935-003_2016R_61412). The technologies proposed by this concept are the highest possible and almost perfect merge of life science/medicine and engineering (electrical, mechanical, optical, etc.); thus learning about them and how to use them, students will highly benefit to make themselves competitive with students in other schools in United States (131) and parts of the World, especially in this case that the students are actually the ones demanding for such an opportunity and the best Bioengineering Schools in USA (Stanford, John Hopkin’s, Columbia Universities) have Teaching Bioengineering Labs. In summary, we expect that offering these skills early will allow students to gain experience in their field early, so they become better optimal candidates when applying for jobs or into top-tier graduate programs. This Lab will provide 7+ Professors with equipment for labs and classes. The number of students affected: at least 300 per three years. The programs/courses which will be affected are mentioned above and the Colleges affected by these program are summarized in Fig.1. Teaching Lab |____ Bioengineering Department |______________ College of Engineering |______________ College of Science |______________ College of Medicine |______________ FAU High School Fig.1. Departments and Colleges affected/involved Setting up this lab will also reinforce and capture all of the 4 research advancement and strategic plans for the period between 2015 – 2025 mentioned by President Kelly’s during the “State of the Campus” address last year: Healthy ageing (Stem and cancer cell research); Neuroscience (Molecular and Cellular aspects of neurons); Ocean Science (Marine drugs testing and effects upon stem cells), Biosensors (stem cells to build them).

Facilities

N/A

Hardware Requirements

1 x XFp Extracellular Metabolic Flux Analyzer: Catalog #: S7802A (Seahorse Bioscience) Living cells can use two methods to burn energy to live. This device measures cellular metabolism in live cells in real time, via the measurement of extracellular flux (oxygen consumption rate and extracellular acidification rate) to provide insight into energy burning (mitochondrial function and glycolytic) activity. Website Link: http://www.agilent.com/en-us/products/cell-analysis-(seahorse)/seahorse-analyzers/seahorse-xfp-analyzer Video Link-1: http://www.agilent.com/en-us/products/cell-analysis-(seahorse)/energy-pathways Video Link-2: http://www.agilent.com/en-us/products/cell-analysis-(seahorse)/transient-microchamber Video Link-3: http://www.agilent.com/en-us/products/cell-analysis-(seahorse)/compound-injection-ports

Software Requirements

N/A

Personnel Costs

N/A

Other Costs

Shipping 10%

Timeline

The set-up of the lab should be prepared for 2017 Fall semester.

Sustainability

Funded via student lab fees.

Resource Matching

N/A

Implementing Organization

College of Engineering, CEECS.