Biomedical Engineering and Biophysics

View Principal Investigators in Biomedical Engineering and Biophysics

It may seem strange, but some problems in medicine can only be solved with engineering. Biomedical engineering is the resulting discipline, encompassing fields as diverse as protein engineering, instrumentation systems, and high-resolution optical imaging of atoms and whole organisms. The Intramural Research Program (IRP) is home to a community of researchers whose drive to integrate physical sciences with life sciences is shaping advances in human health. Our current areas of research include:

• Biophotonics – Developing techniques for imaging cells and tissues with fluorescence
• Cardiovascular Imaging – Creating methods for the detection and quantitative characterization of cardiovascular disease
• Complex Biological Systems – Designing novel instrumentation and mathematical models to understand complex biological systems
• Macromolecular Assembly – Characterizing macromolecules, including the assembly of multi-protein complexes and molecular machines
• High Resolution Imaging – Building super-resolution microscopes, such as photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM)
• Immunochemical Diagnostics – Creating new technologies for the identification of disease, for example, “lab-on-a-chip” immunoassays
• Non-Invasive Optical Imaging – Developing real-time, non-invasive methods to evaluate and monitor tissues and organs

Recent accomplishments include the development of several high-resolution optical imaging tools designed to explore both the microscopic and macroscopic worlds of cells and organisms.

Learn more about the engineering side of biomedical science at our Biomedical Engineering Scientific Interest Group.