News and Events

What does it mean to be a Longhorn student? Texas BME undergraduate student Soren Ettinger DeCou is a good example. Her range of interests is as wide as UT’s offerings. She takes full advantage of those offerings. And she has a passion for public service and improving the world.

Assistant Professor Huiliang (Evan) Wang has received a new five-year R35 grant from the National Institutes of Health to explore and address challenges in the field of optogenetics.

Cells are the building blocks of everything around us. Their ability to group together and form tissue and other complex structures represents the baseline of life and evolution. Many researchers around the world are studying how cells developed this ability to build themselves into complex structures. As research scopes go, it is one of the biggest things anyone can study, too big for just one group to figure out.

The Cockrell School of Engineering has named Professor Tyrone Porter, an accomplished imaging scientist, as the next chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin.

Alireza Sohrabi, a postdoctoral researcher working with Associate Professor Stephanie Seidlits, has received the 2022 BMES Burroughs Young Investigator Award.

Manuel Rausch, an assistant professor of  biomedical engineering and aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at UT Austin, has received a prestigious R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health in the amount of $3.9 million. He will use the funding to lead a study of the heart’s tricuspid valve to better understand functional tricuspid valve regurgitation (FTR)—a condition that causes leakage of the valve located between the right atrium and the right ventricle of the heart.

Natasha Nehra, who graduated with her B.S. in biomedical engineering in 2022, was selected as an Optica Women Scholars recipient.

"Focused ultrasound allows for triggered drug release specifically in the tumor, thus minimizing systemic exposure and associated toxic effects," says Prof Tyrone Porter, the principal investigator of a new study to treat neurofibromatosis type 2.

When people feel sleepy or alert, that sensation is controlled in part by the ebb and flow of a 24-hour rhythm of their body temperature. Bioengineers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a unique mattress and pillow system that uses heating and cooling to tell the body it is time to go to sleep.

Sleep is possible when the body temperature declines at night as part of the 24-hour rhythm. This new mattress stimulates the body to trigger the sleepy feeling, helping people fall asleep faster and improving the quality of sleep.

Ashwin Parthasarathy is fascinated with imaging modalities and how they can be used to collect data and provide physicians with information.

The alum, who earned his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from UT in 2010, has a startup called SPKL and has developed an award-winning blood flow monitor to provide physicians with more information, which he says, will lead to greater medical innovations.