UNSW Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering

Approved Narrative: 17November 2014

Core Narrative

As Australia’s first and most diverse school of its kind, the UNSW Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering (GSBmE) is at the forefront in creating technology leaders who will address today’s medical challenges with engineering solutions to improve the quality of human life.

Long Narrative

Connecting technology and medicine, the School’s teaching and research activities range from: implantable bionics, biomechanics, biomaterials, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, computational bioengineering modelling, diagnostics, neuro-rehabilitation, and telehealth.

Our pioneering R&D teams lead biomedical innovation in collaboration with research and industry partners worldwide. Honours students with a strong grounding in engineering contribute to this R&D excellence, which expands their educational depth, giving them significant career prospects.

The world-class facilities at GSBmE provide researchers with leading-edge capabilities in the following areas: analytical, diagnostic and imaging technologies; medical device fabrication;pre-clinical testing; multi-scale biomechanics and mechanobiology; high-performance computational resources; and neuro-rehabilitation.

Our biomedical innovations translate pioneering ideas into devices and technologies, manufacturing medical-grade products in-house and commercialising with global impact.

Biomed: Proof Points

Awards and Ranking

  • The first Biomedical Engineering School founded in Australia, established in 1976.
  • The most diverse School of its kind in Australia, with teaching and research spanning the broad areas of medical devices, biomechanics, biomaterials, biological sciences and computational modelling.
  • Top engineering faculty in Australia (2014 Good Universities Guide, 2014 Shanghai Jiao Tong Rankings) with the highest percentage of graduates in Australia’s top 100 most influential engineers (Engineers Australia, 2014).

Teaching and Research

  • Our School offers the broadest range of BmE courses in Australia, concurrently building on a variety of solid base engineering disciplines including electrical, mechanical, software and chemical engineering.
  • GSBmE is the only biomedical engineering school in Australia where a student can study a Masters of Biomedical Engineering and an undergraduate engineering degree at the same time.
  • Our academic staff are regularly successful in obtaining competitive research grants from the NHMRC and ARC.
  • We are leading members of a research consortium that has recently been funded an ARC special research initiative grant of $50M to develop an implantable bionic eye.
  • Top-tier lecturers with both academic and commercial experience
  • Melissa Knothe-Tate: Stanford, ETH, Zeiss
  • GreggSuaning:industry links with Cochlear
  • Nigel Lovell: TeleMedCare
  • GSBmE is home to the first Engineering World Health University Chapter in Australia.
  • Approximately 50% of interns at ResMed are from UNSW Engineering.
  • GSBmE is the closest engineering school in all the world to Bondi and Coogee Beach.

Partnerships

  • We collaborate with researchers from a number of Schools and Faculties within UNSW, including Medicine, Science and Engineering.
  • External collaborators from other universities: University of Sydney, Macquarie University, University of Western Sydney, University of Auckland, and a host of other Universities in the US and Europe.
  • GSBmE hosted the BESS annual industry event at ATP Innovations, May 2014.
  • Partnerships with industry
  • Cochlear
  • ResMed
  • Australian Institute of Sport
  • National Heart Foundation
  • Hemcon
  • Telemedcare
  • HCF
  • NICTA
  • NEURA
  • TeleMedCare Pty Ltd

Facilities

  • We have extensive laboratory space, medical device fabrication and teaching facilities, including animal holding areas and wet lab facilities.
  • Bionic eye group: clean room
  • Animal house
  • On-campus collaborations: BMIF (imaging facility)

Students and Alumni

  • Two former Heads of School have taken-up senior executive positions at ResMed: Prof. Peter Farrell (ResMed Founder), and Prof. Klaus Schindhelm (Senior Vice President, Global Applied Research)
  • Dr. Chris Roberts, Chief Executive Officer and President, Cochlear Limited, and former Chairman of Research Australia
  • Professor Nigel Lovell, UNSW Scientia Professor and Class of Fellows Award
  • Melissa Knothe-Tate, a distinguished holder of the Paul Trainor Chair in Biomedical Engineering, also the Class of Fellows Award
  • Dr. Ross Odell, Lecturer of the Year
  • Dr. Megan Lord, winner of 2013 Women in Engineering Award. Megan has attracted more than $2million of funding into the school.
  • Dr. Stephen Redmond is an ARC Future Fellow.
  • Megan Lord, Dr. Redmond and Dr. Penny Martens, winners of the AIPS NSW Young Tall Poppy Science Awards, in 2014, 2012 and 2009 respectively.
  • Tianruo Guo and Keija Wang, 2014 student paper finalists at the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference.
  • Bhautik Joshi, one of the first concurrent degree graduates, worked for LucasFilm for six years, now works for online photo hosting site Flickr.
  • Karl Kruszelnicki, Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering.
  • Justine Roberts, winner of best oral presentation (early career researcher) at the 2014 Australasian Society for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering Conference in Lorne, Victoria.
  • Andrew Woolley and Aaron Gilmore’s photograph of a mice brain published in Scientific American, as well as selected to be part of the Olympus Bioscapes travelling exhibition.
  • PhD and Visiting Fellow Andrew Woolley shared first prize for poster at the Martin Wainwright Analytical Center Outreach Symposium 2014, as well as runner-up for posters at the UNSW Brain Sciences Symposium 2014.
  • PhD student Stacey Rigney is working with the Australian Institute of Sport and Scott Reardon, the world’s fastest man on one leg. She also won best oral presentation at ABED 2014.
  • Nicole Yu, winner of the 2014 Kate Ibbertson Award for Bone & Mineral Medicine.
  • Khalid Alonazi, winner of the Poster Award at ABEC 2014.
  • Professor Simon Roe, Orthopedic Surgery lecturer at North Carolina State University
  • Dr Tom Gibson, Director of Human Impact Engineering
  • Andrew McBryde, software engineer at Atcor Medical

UNSW Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, Approved Narrative (21 October 2014)1