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Area Students Fuel Bay State's Biomedical Boom
Local College-Hospital Partnerships are Mutually Beneficial
hen researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston were studying how to make skin cells grow and heal faster, they turned to Nic Peterson, a local 24-year-old electromechanical engineering student from Wentworth Institute of Technology (WIT) in Boston.
For two semesters, Peterson worked to develop a device that researchers could use to measure the micromechanical forces in the skin of mice, a first step in developing quick-healing wound therapy.
The pairing of engineering and medicine is not so unusual, given the number of medical devices used by healthcare professionals these days. What is remarkable is the amount of medical research being conducted by young students like Peterson. In the five years since Wentworth partnered with Boston-area hospitals, students have worked to develop everything from a wheelchair that prevents bedsores to a subatomic pressure chamber to improve blood flow in a patient's extremities.
Throughout Massachusetts, hospitals are pairing up with colleges and universities in record numbers as the state's biotechnology boom moves out of the laboratory and into the classroom.
"Most of these [hospital] researchers have no skills in the engineering area so universities offer a big advantage to them," notes Bob Villanucci, a professor with WIT's electronic and mechanical engineering departments whose students have created hardware and software to keep research data flowing in the years ahead at area hospitals.
In the University of Massachusetts Medical School Worcester research labs, between 40 and 50 seniors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) each dedicates a year to healthrelated research annually. The institute's graduate and PhD students spend even longer, between three and five years. The collaboration between WPI and hospitals in the region has produced a wealth of data on everything from tissue engineering to regenerative medicine, says Eric Overstrom, director of WPI's Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center.
Like other schools, Boston College is tapping into the region's booming biotech market through job boards and alumni contacts, placing students with local hospitals, where they assist on projects ranging from liver transplants to biomedical research. By the time the school's pre-health students reach their senior year, almost all will have acquired experience in the healthcare field, says Robert J. Wolf, chairman of BC's pre-medical and pre-dental admission committee and a member of the biology department faculty.
School officials say partnering with local hospitals and medical facilities not only gives students valuable hands-on field training, it also allows them the opportunity to publish their research, exposes them to different options to help them narrow their career focus, and opens doors to jobs after graduation. Hospitals gain as well through a steady stream of young researchers, whose work often leads to new medical discoveries and ideas.
Such partnerships have proven successful for patients as well. According to school and hospital officials, the thousands of student research hours have led to a number of innovative discoveries and treatments that keep Massachusetts among the top medical regions in the country.
