The School of Engineering has broken ground for a new state-of-the-art, 80,000-square-foot biomedical engineering building on Busch campus to be completed by 2004. Features in the new building include student instructional laboratories for physiology, biomaterials and biomechanics, and molecular and cellular engineering, and core research facilities for genomics and proteomics, tissue engineering, advanced microscopy, biomedical optics, microfabrication, and animal-based studies. There will be a high-performance computing and visualization center with several satellite labs. The biomedical engineering research laboratories are currently dispersed through engineering and contain special equipment such as epifluorescence optical microscopy, laser-scanning confocal microscopy, atomic force microscopy, an instron for mechanical testing, flow cytometry and cell sorter, and encompass experimental techniques such as computer-assisted dynamic cell motion analysis, biomaterial synthesis and modification, microscale substrate biopatterning. PCR amplification and DNA microarrayers and scanners for gene expression profiling, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis coupled to mass spectrometry for protein expression and isotopomer balancing for metabolite profiling. Student instructional laboratories dedicated to the biomedical engineering undergraduate are available in our current facility complete with the latest software to educate students in physiological systems analysis and biomedical measurement techniques. A newly developed instructional laboratory dedicated to tissue engineering will expose students to cell culture systems, microscopy and imaging, quantification of cell growth stimulation, and the like. Extensive laboratories of other departments within the university and those of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School are also available for research and special studies.
