The Department of Bioengineering, University of Pittsburgh (UoP) is seeking support for a pre-doctoral training program aimed at educating talented students from engineering and other quantitative sciences for careers in biomedical research in the cardiovascular area. UOP has been at the forefront of education and research in this field, with two key components contributing to this status. First, a mechanism is in place whereby our students are exposed first-hand to actual clinical problems requiring bioengineering input for their solution within various medical disciplines (e.g., cardiology, cardio-thoracic surgery, vascular surgery, radiology). Second, there has been, and continues to be, a significant Institutional commitment to these research and educational endeavors. The proposed program is interdisciplinary and interdepartmental in nature. Although the Department of Bioengineering forms the core, the training faculty is drawn from a number of departments: Chemical Engineering, Cell Biology &Physiology, Medicine (Cardiology), Critical Care Medicine, Pediatrics (Cardiology), Surgery (Cardio-thoracic and Vascular), and Radiology. The participating faculty members are (bio)engineers, physiologists, biophysicist, cell and molecular biologists, adult and pediatric cardiologists, cardio-thoracic surgeons, and critical care specialists, with vigorous and well-funded research programs. There are three focus areas of this program: (1) Basic understanding and quantitative characterization of native (normal and pathological conditions) and perturbed (i.e., with deployment of man-made devices or constructs) cardiovascular function at various levels of organization (cell, tissue, whole organ), (2) Imaging for functional assessment at various levels of organization (cell, tissue, whole organ), and (3) Design and optimization of artificial devices and constructs (mechanical, tissue-engineered, and hybrid). Students are drawn mainly from engineering schools, although they may also come from biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. Program coursework (12 didactic courses and several workshops) is designed to provide both breadth and depth in engineering and biological sciences and also includes a formal exposure to biostatistics, bioethics, and professional and career development issues. One novel aspect of the program is that students are required to formally participate in a clinical experience (Clinical Internship and Rotation). Finally, each student receives extensive research training in the laboratories of the training faculty. We believe the proposed program provides a unique educational and research experience with respect to basic and applied cardiovascular engineering and sciences.
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