Duke BME Makes a Splash at 2023 BMES Conference
With a busy booth, impressive research presentations, and a large faculty and student presence, Duke BME made a grand showing at the annual meeting
Nearly 70 faculty, staff, and students from Duke University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering attended the 2023 Biomedical Engineering Society Meeting, held in Seattle, Washington from October 13-15. The event gave the department an opportunity to interact face-to-face with prospective undergraduate and graduate students, and to discuss potential collaborations with their peers at other universities.
The event is organized by the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), a professional society for students, faculty, researchers and industry professionals in biomedical engineering. The BMES annual meeting hosts nearly 5,500 biomedical engineers and includes more than 2,500 scientific presentations from faculty and students on topics including cancer treatment, biomedical imaging, global health, and tissue engineering.
In addition to the research talks, BMES also inducts new fellows and announces new leadership positions. During the 2023 meeting, Aaron Kyle, a professor of the practice in Duke BME, was officially named a BMES fellow, and was one of four faculty elected to the Board of Directors for the BMES leadership team.
The conference also included a reception hosted by the department, where students, faculty and collaborators had a chance to chat with Duke BME faculty one-on-one about research and open lab and job positions.
As one of the key events to advertise the success of the department, staff members Danielle Giles, Michaela Martinez, and Jamel Forbes spent nearly a quarter of the year prepping materials and working with faculty to organize BME’s presence and booth at the meeting.
Giles, the senior PhD program coordinator for Duke BME, and Forbes, a staff specialist for the Duke BME PhD program, worked together to help organize student and faculty attendees and ensured that visitors to the booth would receive swag and useful handouts that highlighted resources across the department. Martinez, the communications specialist for the department, worked with Giles and a team of faculty to craft the media that decorated the booth, designing posters and flyers that highlighted topics including the department’s DEI and outreach efforts, new faculty, statistics about the department, and recent research and entrepreneurial success.
“We have an incredibly dedicated team, and they put together a great event that showed our colleagues, alumni, and prospective students what is so special about biomedical engineering at Duke.”
Joseph Izatt
Professor and Chair of Biomedical Engineering
“Our booth was always busy with prospective students asking great questions about our undergraduate and graduate programs, and our graduate students shared their enthusiasm about working at Duke,” said Giles. “It’s always a lot of work putting this event together, but I think we made a great impression and showed that Duke is a wonderful place to be.”
“Duke BME had a great presence at this year’s meeting, and I’m so grateful to the faculty, students and staff who worked together to ensure that this year was a success,” said Duke BME department chair Joseph Izatt. “We have an incredibly dedicated team, and they put together a great event that showed our colleagues, alumni, and prospective students what is so special about biomedical engineering at Duke.”