Catalog Navigator : Biomedical Engineering

BME Teaching Facility. The first floor of the Biomedical Engineering (BME) building is designated for the classrooms and teaching laboratory space. This facility serves as the focus of biomedical engineering educational and training activities on the Rutgers campus. The first floor occupies auditorium and classroom facilities for student instructions, teaching laboratories in molecular and cell biology, biomechanics, and bioinstrumentation, student computer laboratories, and student reading room and student society room.

BME Research Facilities. Biomedical engineering has research facilities located on the second and third floor. Each floor contains three self-contained tissue culture rooms. Each room is equipped with four temperature controlled water-jacketed incubators, three biosafety cabinets, a refrigerator/freezer, tabletop centrifuge, inverted microscope, upright microscope, and water bath.

In addition, the lab is equipped with inverted and upright microscopes, a digitized fluorescence microscopy station, a fluorescence activated cell sorter, an autoclave, and cryopreservation facilities. A confocal microscope, housed in the basement of the building is also available for our experimental use. The cell and tissue engineering laboratory is thus suitable for mammalian tissue culture, cell function analysis, cell separation, and protein expression evaluation. The cell and tissue analysis and characterization lab contains a full complement of biochemical and molecular biological equipment including vertical and horizontal gel boxes, power supplies, a spectrophotometer, a gel imaging and analysis workstation, several microcentrifuges, a -80°C freezer, and all necessary biochemicals and electrophoresis supplies needed for protein and nucleic acid separation and analysis. This facility also contains three biosafety cabinets and a light cycler for nucleic acid isolation, purification, amplification, and general PCR technology. In addition, a separate bacterial culture and analysis laboratory contains a bacterial culture incubator and independent centrifuges and electrophoresis gel boxes. These laboratories are thus equipped for dynamic evaluation of cells and tissues from the macroscopic and microscopic levels to molecular analysis of protein and gene expression.

Optical Imaging and Microscopy Laboratories. The lab has optical coherence tomography and laser scanning confocal microscopy instruments which can be customized for imaging in vivo or ex vivo cells and tissues. The lab is equipped with an 8' x 4' vibration isolated optical table, four networked PCs, a fiber-optic polisher, and general purpose test and measurement equipment including power supplies, a function generator, and an oscilloscope.The lab is also equipped with an inverted microscope, Zeiss Axiovert 200M with DIC 63x NA 1.4 oil, and 20x NA 0.75, Phase 40, 20, 10x and Fluorescence: FITC/GFP, TRITC, YFP, DAPI capabilities.The microscope has also been customized for central dark field/optical scatter imaging for sizing and morphological assessment.

BioMEMS and Microfabrication Laboratory. This laboratory integrates micro- and nanotechnology within various engineering disciplines with life sciences and medical applications, which are rapidly converging to spawn new platforms for point-of-care diagnostics, biomedical imaging, and regenerative therapies, creating a highly technical and thoroughly collaborative biomedical engineering environment. The laboratory supports research, training, and education to prepare the next generation of scientists and engineers. It maintains a fully equipped 1,000-square-foot clean room microfabrication facility housed within the BME building with photolithography, physical vapor deposition, plasma etching, and other capabilities.

Stem Cell Biology and Bioengineering Laboratory. This laboratory is equipped for all cellular, histological, and molecular recombinant DNA techniques, with dedicated microscope room for imaging analysis. A modern animal facility is available in the basement of the BME building for rodent animal model research. It is equipped with surgical areas and a biosafety cabinet. Major equipment items include: PCR machine for recombinant DNA applications; BTX ECM 830 electroporator for in vivo/ovo electroporation experiments; Thermo 620E cryostat for tissue sectioning; fluorescence stereomicroscope (Leica M16FA); injection station for mouse and chick embryos; epifluorescence upright microscope (Zeiss Axio Imager M1) for image data analysis.

The Biomechanics and Rehabilitation Engineering Laboratory (BREL). The BREL lab is specifically interested in topics of neurorehabilitation and motor control. Major projects within the lab investigate novel tools for the rehabilitation of chronic stroke, cerebral palsy, and spinal cord injury, as well as characterization of aspects of manual and pedal motor control in normal and afflicted subjects.