Health Care Technologies

Applying engineering concepts and practice to solve problems in biology and medicine and translate basic science to bedside care.

MArkerS And MileStoneS

2005 School receives $10 million gift from Ernst and Sara Volgenau to establish new Department of Bioengineering

2010 BS in Bioengineering approved

2013 MS in Biostatistics approved

2015 PhD in Bioengineering approved

Computational Biology Research Promotes Understanding of Human Health

Amarda Shehu, associate professor of computer science, who works at the intersection of computer science and biology, grew up without a computer. She said when she saw her frst computer in 1998, she didn't even know where the 'on' button was.

What Shehu did have was an abundance of imagination and persistence. Her research now spans several disciplines as she works with colleagues across the university.

Shehu holds afliated appointments in the Department of Systems Biology and the Department of Bioengineering. She researches computational structural biology, biophysics, and bioinformatics with a focus on issues concerning the relationship between sequence, structure, dynamics, and function in biological molecules. Her research is supported by various National Science Foundation (NSF) programs, as well as other state programs and private foundations. Over the past fve years, she's received more than $1.5 million in funding from the NSF.

During Shehu's years at the American University in Bulgaria, and later in graduate studies at Rice University in Texas, she came of age professionally in a world dominated by males. But as a girl in Albania, being a math/science geek was mainstream. She competed in myriad national and international math competitions and dominated math Olympiads in high school. She was rewarded for her success with status among her teachers, parents, and peers. Describing her childhood in Albania, Shehu says, "Education was the only liberating experience; it was like sports here."

Enamored with Western culture at a young age, her literature professor father and her physician mother encouraged her to master German and English. While she loved music, and dreamt soprano dreams, her father pointed her frmly toward math and science.

Amarda Shehu, associate professor in computer science, mentors computer science students.

"Sopranos are poor," he told her.

As a mathematician, she understood the beauty of patterns, and in high school Shehu had her frst important mentor. That inspiring, creative biology teacher provided an introduction to computational biology. "I cared about the relationship between what I was learning and human health," Shehu says of the principle that guides her research.

The research is long and arduous, but it is advancing our understanding of molecular mechanisms in healthy and diseased cells as well as in computer science, as Shehu's work leads to new software solutions that solve biological conundrums. For example, she is examining how certain proteins participate in the formation of cancer and other diseases, and she has collaborated with colleagues from Mason's Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study to study addiction. As Shehu puts it, "They don't put menthol in cigarettes for taste!"

A version of this story by Molly Brauer appeared on the Ofce of Research and Economic Development website.

“I cared about the relationship between what I was learning and human health.”

—AMARDA SHEHU

Motor Control Teory Research

Good things come in small packages, and the human brain is no exception. Tipping the scales at a mere three pounds, the human brain is the most complex organ in the body. It contains a hundred billion nerve cells, with more than 10 billion of them linked to the motor system that controls movement.

It is this motor system that Wilsaan Joiner, assistant professor of bioengineering, and his research team are studying in the Volgenau School of Engineering’s SensoriMotor Integration Laboratory.

Joiner came to the school in 2012 after postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard and the National Institutes of Health. His current research aims to use laboratory discoveries to help create devices and treatment strategies for people with disabilities. In 2014 he received $977,000 from the National Institutes of Health in the form of Mason’s frst-ever K99/R00 Award to help fund this work.

"The main objective of this research is to use what we discover in the laboratory setting to help create devices and treatment strategies for the motor and perceptual disabilities associated with disorders of neural movement signals and their transmission throughout the brain," says Joiner.

Establishing the correct spatial and temporal patterns of movement activation is a complex process. It involves studying various muscles, sensory organs, neural levels, and numerous interactions. Everyday movements—walking, jumping, or running—require a learning process we rarely think about unless we need to relearn these actions because of injury or disease. We use a similar learning process for new motor skills such as writing or playing tennis.

Human movements also pose an interesting problem for our senses. In other words, how do we distinguish the changes in the environment (feeling the wind on our skin) from the sensations that result from our own

Wilsaan Joiner

actions (feeling air rushing past our arms as we move)? Joiner's research focuses on how we learn new motor skills and how we distinguish self-caused and externally caused sensations.

The work has two major themes. The frst concerns visual perception and eye movements. The team is applying engineering control theory to biological systems, specifcally modeling the behavior and coordination of the eye and arm movement systems. The second uses behavioral approaches to determine the mechanisms that underlie visual stability and perception, especially during the disruptions to visual input that occur during eye movements used to sample the environment.

The work seeks to quantify the ability of healthy individuals to distinguish sensory changes and then apply this knowledge to disease states such as schizophrenia, where people have difculty distinguishing self-caused actions from externally caused events.

A Bear-y Good Device

Jade Garrett admits to knowing very little about launching a business or developing hardware from scratch. She's into software, and she's pretty good at it. With the help of the Mason Innovation Lab, she's able to combine those elements to create something that's not only tactile and salable; it's also helpful to those with special needs.

Garrett, who graduated this spring with a bachelor’s degree in applied information technology, spent summer 2014 working on a toy bear that is also a computer game controller. Designed for children with autism, the plush bear answers several needs across the autism spectrum. For instance, a plush animal is easier to hold for longer periods of time than a controller, and those with motor-control issues fnd the buttons easier to use than a track ball or keyboard.

The bear is named CADI (pronounced "Caddy”), short for Computer Assisted Device Input Bear. It's still in the prototype stage, but with the help of the School of Business's Mason Innovation Lab and the Lab for IT Entrepreneurship, the bear is coming out of hibernation and making the rounds as Garrett meets those in the business of creating businesses for those with special needs. In the special education community, the bear has been "received very well," says Garrett, who was also president of the Mason Inventor's Club. "Teachers tell me they can't even use computers for the severely physically impaired, but this could improve outcomes for them," because it would remove that computer anxiety.

Garrett also wants to make it easier on parents and special education teachers by developing a web application that will track and record metrics about the child while they are playing a game with the bear. She is currently working on the software, which will generate a report showing if the child has been able to master a skill, such as better accuracy or cognition of a subject.

Mason faculty and staf have helped her fll in a business plan, identify a market, conduct focus groups to hone the idea, and "have conversations to see the viability and opportunities" with those in business, she says.

So far, the single mother has spent $2,000 on the bear; some funding came from a Google contest, and the rest of her own upfront funding is reimbursed by the Innovation Lab. She's driven by an innate need to help others, not by profts.

"I used to teach adapted aquatics, teaching people without limbs or with cerebral palsy or autism how to swim," she says, adding that having a baby took her out of the pool. "But I still like helping people learn. I probably wouldn't fnd a lot of interest in it if it was just for the money. I could get a job programming, but I'd rather do something to feel like I'm making a change."

A version of this story by Buzz McClain appeared in Mason News.

Student Jade Garrett with CADI Bear attends Patriot Demo Day outside of the Mason Innovation Lab.