Department of Biomedical Engineering

Seeing her father struggle through rehabilitation exercises after a stroke made Marina Samuel '25 think, why can’t therapy be more personalized, effective and efficient for the patient? So, with a central focus on patients, she pursued a bachelor’s in biomedical engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology and after graduation in May, will seek a Ph.D. in the same discipline at NJIT. Her research as an undergraduate fueled this pursuit. In the Clinical Neuromuscular Lab of Assistant Professor Jongsang Son, Samuel synthesized findings from 20 studies on the acute and chronic effects...

Soldiers training on heavy artillery and athletes in contact sports are routinely exposed to repetitive mild shockwaves and injuries. Unlike someone who has just dodged a missile explosion or been smacked by a linebacker, they may feel little immediate impact. The cumulative effects of these low-level blasts can, however, cause neurological problems such as sleep disorders and attention deficits, noted Bryan Pfister, director of New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Center for Injury Biomechanics, Materials and Medicine. He explained, “If you have a mild hit, the first hit, does that...

Elisa Kallioniemi slides a circular disk over her head, stops above her right ear and clicks. Her left hand jumps. She moves it a couple of inches back, clicks again, and is suddenly speechless, mid-sentence. With a single pulse of electromagnetic energy, her device can activate or inhibit the brain’s major command centers. What she is now trying to determine is whether multiple pulses in the motor cortex can produce longer-term therapeutic results by retraining neural circuits. Her first focus is people who have lost some control of their limbs following a stroke. “We know from...

New Jersey Institute of Technology Professors Vivek Kumar and Xuan Liu have been named as Senior Members in the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) 2025 class. They join 162 emerging academic inventors from 64 NAI Member Institutions across the nation recognized for their outstanding contributions to innovation. Kumar, associate professor of biomedical engineering, and Liu, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, are part of the largest class to date, collectively holding over 1,200 U.S. patents. “We are incredibly proud to have Professors Kumar and Liu join the...