Design-Based Doctoral Education in Bioengineering

2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa K. R. Burke ◽  
Sara E. Wilson

Abstract In order to meet the needs of industry, graduate schools should consider adding design-based programs to their curriculum. A majority of Ph.D. students in bio-engineering and biomedical engineering (BME) seek employment outside of academia, implying that these students will need to be able to leverage their dissertation research for other types of positions. Here, curriculum elements are examined from several graduate programs across the United States and a strategy is proposed that combines bio-engineering design-based research and education at the doctoral level. Ideally, a design-based Ph.D. includes: traditional engineering and scientific coursework, coursework focused on the design and commercialization process, industry and clinical experiences, and design-centric research. A design-based dissertation leverages the design process into specific aims that build on each other to complete a body of work. These aims can occur at different points in the design process and should include evaluation of the technology against user needs. It is possible to orient the in-depth research of a doctoral dissertation to the design of an innovative medical product that can be of a benefit to patients.

2010 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelyn R. Klein ◽  
Barbara J. Amster

Abstract A study by Yaruss and Quesal (2002), based on responses from 134 of 239 ASHA accredited graduate programs, indicated that approximately 25% of graduate programs in the United States allow students to earn their degree without having coursework in fluency disorders and 66% of programs allow students to graduate without clinical experience treating people who stutter (PWS). It is not surprising that many clinicians report discomfort in treating PWS. This cross-sectional study compares differences in beliefs about the cause of stuttering between freshman undergraduate students enrolled in an introductory course in communicative disorders and graduate students enrolled and in the final weeks of a graduate course in fluency disorders.


1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Barbara Orlans

Attitudes toward the Three Rs concept of refinement, reduction and replacement in the United States in research and education are widely divergent. Positive responses have come from several sources, notably from four centres established to disseminate information about alternatives. Funding sources to support work in the Three Rs have proliferated. The activities of institutional oversight committees have resulted in the nationwide implementation of important refinements. In the field of education, student projects involving pain or death for sentient animals have declined, and the right of students to object to participation in animal experiments on ethical grounds has been widely established. However, there is still a long way to go. Resistance to alternatives is deep-seated within several of the scientific disciplines most closely associated with animal research. The response of the National Institutes of Health to potentially important Congressional directives on the Three Rs has been unsatisfactory. The prestigious National Association of Biology Teachers, which at first endorsed the use of alternatives in education, later rescinded this policy, because of opposition to it. An impediment to progress is the extreme polarisation of viewpoints between the biomedical community and the animal protectionists.


Author(s):  
Jacqueline B. Barnett

The application of ergonomics is important when considering the built environment. In order to create an environment where form follows function, a detailed understanding of the tasks performed by the individuals who will live and work in the facility is required. Early involvement in the project is key to maximizing the benefit of ergonomics. At Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Canada, this early intervention was embraced during the design process of a behavioural care unit for aggressive patients. The ergonomist was involved in three phases of design; user needs analysis, block schematics and detailed design. The user needs and characteristics were established using a combination of focus groups, interviews, direct observation, task analysis and critique of current working environments. The challenge was to present the information to the design team in a useful manner. The format chosen was a modification of Userfit (Poulson 1996) that outlined the various characteristics of the patient group and the design consequences with “what does this mean for me” statements. During the block schematics phase an iterative design process was used to ensure that the ergonomic principles and the user needs were incorporated into the design. Ergonomic input was used in determining the room sizes and layout and to ensure work processes were considered. Simple mock-ups and anthropometric data assisted in illustrating the need for design changes. Examples that highlight the areas of greatest impact of ergonomic intervention include the patient bathrooms, showers and tub room. Significant changes were made to the design to improve the safety of the work and living space of the end users. One of the greatest challenges was having an appreciation for the individual goals of the team members. Ensuring there was adequate space for equipment and staff often resulted in recommendations for increased space. This in turn would increase the cost of the project. The architect and, later in the project, the engineer had goals of bringing the project in on budget. The final design was very much a team effort and truly die result of an iterative process. The sum of the individual contributions could not match the combined efforts. It was only through the ergonomic contributions in this early design phase that the needs of the staff, patients and families could be so well represented. The success of the iterative process provides the foundation for bringing ergonomics considerations into the early design stages of future projects.


1996 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall H. Medoff

This paper uses citation counts, over the period 1971–1992, to rank the top 250 academic economists in the United States. Schools were ranked by the number of top 250 economists a university had on their faculty. Graduate programs were ranked by those Ph.D. programs which have produced the greatest number of the top 250 academic economists. The paper's principal finding is that five universities, Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, MIT, and Princeton are the elite among all Universities.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Anthony T. Fuller ◽  
Ariana Barkley ◽  
Robin Du ◽  
Cyrus Elahi ◽  
Ali R. Tafreshi ◽  
...  

OBJECTIVEGlobal neurosurgery is a rapidly emerging field that aims to address the worldwide shortages in neurosurgical care. Many published outreach efforts and initiatives exist to address the global disparity in neurosurgical care; however, there is no centralized report detailing these efforts. This scoping review aims to characterize the field of global neurosurgery by identifying partnerships between high-income countries (HICs) and low- and/or middle-income countries (LMICs) that seek to increase neurosurgical capacity.METHODSA scoping review was conducted using the Arksey and O’Malley framework. A search was conducted in five electronic databases and the gray literature, defined as literature not published through traditional commercial or academic means, to identify studies describing global neurosurgery partnerships. Study selection and data extraction were performed by four independent reviewers, and any disagreements were settled by the team and ultimately the team lead.RESULTSThe original database search produced 2221 articles, which was reduced to 183 final articles after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria. These final articles, along with 9 additional gray literature references, captured 169 unique global neurosurgery collaborations between HICs and LMICs. Of this total, 103 (61%) collaborations involved surgical intervention, while local training of medical personnel, research, and education were done in 48%, 38%, and 30% of efforts, respectively. Many of the collaborations (100 [59%]) are ongoing, and 93 (55%) of them resulted in an increase in capacity within the LMIC involved. The largest proportion of efforts began between 2005–2009 (28%) and 2010–2014 (17%). The most frequently involved HICs were the United States, Canada, and France, whereas the most frequently involved LMICs were Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya.CONCLUSIONSThis review provides a detailed overview of current global neurosurgery efforts, elucidates gaps in the existing literature, and identifies the LMICs that may benefit from further efforts to improve accessibility to essential neurosurgical care worldwide.


Plant Disease ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 94 (8) ◽  
pp. 1065-1065 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. L. B. Tarnowski ◽  
R. C. Ploetz

Postharvest anthracnose of papaya, Carica papaya, is an important disease in most production areas worldwide (2). Colletotrichum gloeosporioides causes two types of anthracnose symptoms on papaya: (i) circular, sunken lesions with pink sporulation; and (ii) sharply defined, reddish brown and sunken lesions, described as ‘chocolate spot’ (2). Colletorichum spp. were isolated from lesions of the first type on papaya fruit from the University of Florida Tropical Research and Education Center, Homestead in December 2007 and from fruit imported from Belize in March 2008 (4). Single-spore isolates were identified using colony morphology and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and mating type (MAT1-2) sequences. Two taxa were identified in both locations: (i) C. gloeosporioides (MAT1-2; GenBank Nos. GQ925065 and GQ925066) with white-to-gray, fluffy colonies with orange sporulation and straight and cylindrical conidia; and (ii) C. capsici (ITS; GenBank Nos. GU045511 to GU045514) with sparse, fluffy, white colonies with setose acervuli and falcate conidia. In addition, in Florida, a Glomerella sp. (ITS; GenBank Nos. GU045518 and GU045520 to GU045522) was recovered with darkly pigmented colonies that produced fertile perithecia after 7 to 10 days on potato dextrose agar (PDA). In each of three experiments, mature fruit (cv. Caribbean Red) were wounded with a sterile needle and inoculated with a 15-μl drop of 0.3% water agar that contained 105 conidia ml–1 of representative isolates of each taxon. The diameters of developing lesions were measured after 7 days of incubation in the dark at 25°C, and the presence of inoculated isolates was confirmed by their recovery from lesion margins on PDA. In all experiments, C. capsici and C. gloeosporioides produced lesions that were significantly larger than those that were caused by the water control and Glomerella sp. (respectively, approximately 12, 17, 0, and <1 mm in diameter). C. gloeosporioides produced sunken lesions with dark gray centers and pink/gray sporulation, which match those previously described for anthracnose on papaya (2). In contrast, C. capsici produced dark lesions due to copious setae of this pathogen; they resembled C. capsici-induced lesions on papaya that were reported previously from the Yucatan Peninsula (3). C. capsici has also been reported to cause papaya anthracnose in Asia (4), but to our knowledge, this is the first time it has been reported to cause this disease in Florida. Since it was also recovered from fruit that were imported from Belize, it probably causes anthracnose of papaya in that country as well. Another falcate-spored species, C. falcatum, was recovered from rotted papaya fruit in Texas (1). The Glomerella sp. was recovered previously from other hosts as an endophyte and causes anthracnose lesions on passionfruit (4). However, its role as a pathogen on papaya is uncertain since it was not pathogenic in the current work; the isolates that were recovered from papaya lesions may have colonized lesions that were caused by C. capsici and C. gloeosporioides. References: (1) Anonymous. Index of Plant Diseases in the United States. U.S. Dept. of Agric. Handb. No. 165. Washington, D.C., 1960. (2) D. M. Persley and R. C. Ploetz. Page 373 in: Diseases of Tropical Fruit Crops. R. C. Ploetz, ed. CABI Publishing. Wallingford, UK, 2003. (3) R. Tapia-Tussell et al. Mol Biotechnol 40:293, 2008. (4) T. L. Tarnowski. Ph.D. diss. University Florida, Gainesville, 2009.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meredith Apfelbaum ◽  
Kendra Sharp ◽  
Andy Dong

Abstract The objective of this paper is to develop a methodology to better understand behavioral empathy in the design process for the purpose of addressing user needs. To accomplish this, content analysis was conducted on undergraduate student assignments that documented group projects designing a consumer product. Using qualitative data analysis, the assignments and presentations were coded for their levels of behavioral empathy, using a scale that applied psychology and design theories. The Interpersonal Reactivity Index was administered to the students to assess their trait empathy. Results from these two analyses showed little connection between levels of behavioral empathy and self-assessed trait empathy of the student groups. The student assignments did reveal empathic waves that demonstrated comprehension and application of expressed user needs, evidenced by ascending and descending the empathy scale. These results indicate that is it not trait empathy that leads to empathic design, but rather applied empathy in the design process; developing internal empathy is not sufficient if it does not effectively translate user needs to technical requirements in the final design.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Laun

With a renewed global focus on anti-submarine warfare (ASW), the United States Navy will increasingly rely on unmanned underwater vehicle (UUV) technology to serve as a cost-effective force multiplier. Modern UUV development necessitates a uniquely constrained, iterative approach to the traditional submarine design spiral. Considering a broad spectrum of customer-generated requirements, the UUV conceptual design process applies the best practices of naval architecture, marine engineering, ocean engineering, systems engineering, and submersible design. This paper provides an assessment of the traditional approach to the UUV design and development process. Specifically, this paper analyzes the design philosophy for modern UUVs, provides a design framework for the UUV conceptual design process, and details specific recommendations to encourage innovation in the subsea realm.


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