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Robert M. Raphael, Ph.D.,who is hard of hearing, is an assis-tant professor in Bioengineering atRice University, and J. Tilak Rat-nanather, D.Phil., who happens tobe deaf, is an assistant researchprofessor in Biomedical Engineer-ing at Johns Hopkins University.They are excited about the increas-ing number of undergraduates whoare deaf or hard of hearing and aremajoring in this field and have per-sonally mentored several of thesestudents.

In Spring 2003, at least three un-dergraduates who are deaf or hardof hearing will earn bachelor’s de-grees in Biomedical Engineering(BME) or Bioengineering. These in-clude Kelly Halacka at Case West-ern Reserve University, NathanSpencer at Rice University, andMatt Browne at University of Cali-fornia at San Diego. Later this year,a graduate student at Johns Hop-kins University, Lina Reiss, will be-come the first person who is deafto defend a doctoral dissertation inBME. With all these graduations,there is some concern about the fu-ture, but the ranks of the deaf andhard of hearing in bioengineeringwill be replenished by DominicPisano, Brian Kelly, and Tim Bran-dau, who are majoring in BME orBioengineering at Johns HopkinsUniversity, Syracuse University, andUniversity of Iowa, respectively.

Kelly Halacka, a Michigan native,will graduate with a concentrationin Biomechanics with a minor inEnglish. She likes to write as wellas solve free-body diagrams. Pro-foundly deaf like her two siblings,

she has spent extended periods inHouston, TX, completing a cooper-ative internship with NASA’s John-son Space Center via the AmericanAssociation for the Advancementof Science’s ENTRY POINT! pro-gram. She plans to attend gradu-ate school to earn a master’s de-gree in BiomechanicalEngineering.

Born and raised in Portland, OR,Nathan Spencer was diagnosedwith severe deafness when he was18 months old and later attendedTucker-Maxon Oral School. Duringhis junior year at Rice University,he met Raphael and became fasci-nated by both the complexity andthe function of the auditory system.After a year of undergraduate re-search with Raphael, he spent asummer with Peter Steyger, Ph.D.,who is hard of hearing and an as-sistant professor of otolaryngology– head and neck surgery at OregonHealth and Science University(OHSU). Spencer visualized the dis-tribution of various carbohydratesin cochlear structures via lectin (aplant-derived protein) binding andconfocal microscopy in Steyger’slab. He also presented a poster atthe midwinter meeting of the Asso-ciation for Research in Otolaryn-gology in February 2003. Spencer isconducting targeted drug deliveryand micromechanical experimentsin Raphael’s lab using the en-hanced knowledge of the struc-tures in the cochlea. He aspires tobecome a physician/scientist spe-cializing in otolaryngology. Givenhis recent participation in a Nation-al Deaf Leadership Council inWashington, DC, Spencer is certain

to become a strong advocate forthe deaf in science.

Matt Browne, born and raised inAnaheim, CA, has been profoundlydeaf from birth, and received theNucleus® 24 implant in 1997. Mattspent two summers writing soft-ware to manipulate magnetic res-onance imaging (MRI) data forRatnanather as part of a NationalScience Foundation-sponsored Re-search Experiences for Undergrad-uates (REU) program. At CochlearCorporation in Sydney, Australia,last summer he wrote a headset-testing program in Labview andoffered his experiences as a userto other engineers. (Matt alsoplayed the baritone in his highschool band at the opening cere-mony of the 2000 Olympic Gamesin Sydney.)

So what is so special about BMEand Bioengineering? It is an inter-disciplinary field that utilizes engi-neering skills in solving biologicalproblems that have the potential toimprove the detection and treat-ment of diseases. In particular, BMEhas been responsible for medicaladvances such as cochlear im-plants, digital hearing aids, defibril-

Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering:Accomplishments by People Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing by Robert M. Raphael, Ph.D., and J. Tilak Ratnanather, D.Phil.

Robert Raphael and Nathan Spencer from RiceUniversity, Tommy LaVergne/Rice Univertity.

March/April 2003 •VOLTA VOICES 23

lators, and CAT and PET scans. Thepast few decades have seen BMEand Bioengineering become estab-lished engineering majors at col-leges with the number of under-graduates doubling in the 1990s.BME can be considered as a “hot”major in the dawn of the “Biotech-nological Century.” So it is not sur-prising to see people who are deafor hard of hearing attracted to anincreasingly popular academic ma-jor that has the potential to affectso many. Nathan Spencer re-marked, “I think it’s important forBioengineering/BME to have peo-ple with disabilities because thewhole aim of Bioengineering/BMEis to advance healthcare, and weknow first hand the importance ofthese advancements in our ownlives. In addition, for me, there’s al-ways been an element of accom-plishment in succeeding despite ofthe disability. I’d bet this is true ofothers as well and would be an as-set to the field ofBioengineering/BME.”

Dominic Pisano, who becamepostlingually deafened due tohereditary deafness, was educatedin the mainstream and was one ofthe top high school soccer playersin Ohio. After meeting Ratnanatherduring an Open Day visit to JohnsHopkins University, he switchedmajors to BME. Pisano looks for-ward to the day when neurosur-geons who are deaf can work inthe operating room via remote cap-tioning displays on their wrists. Inhis first semester, Dominic has fa-miliarized himself with imagingsoftware by making an interactivemovie. Dominic also has just beendrafted into the USA Deaf SoccerSquad and is preparing for theDeaflympics in 2005. He alsohelped to recruit yet another stu-dent who is deaf or hard of hearingwho hopes to enter the BME under-graduate program in Fall 2003.

At age 3, Tim Brandau was the firstchild in Iowa to receive a cochlear

implant. He is very thankful to theBiomedical Engineering industryfor his implant. Tim wants to learnskills that will enable him to furtheradvance biomedical technology sothat he may help others as he hasbeen helped. As a freshman, heplays the saxophone in the Univer-sity of Iowa Hawkeye MarchingBand, thus establishing a rivalrywith his older brother at Iowa StateUniversity.

An Annapolis, MD, native, BrianKelly has been deaf since birth, butwas misdiagnosed until age 2,when he received hearing aids.Later, when he was 7, he receivedhis first cochlear implant, the Nu-cleus® 22 in 1990, one day after theFood and Drug Administration ap-proved the CI for children. About 10years later (2000), he received an-other cochlear implant, theNucleus® 24, in his other ear. He iscurrently spending his sophomorewinter break at the House Ear Insti-tute studying noise in cochlear im-plants. At the Syracuse Institute forSensory Research, he developedsoftware to study how the brain de-tects the presence of noise. This re-search has been mentioned inSyracuse University Magazine.

The auditory research that is per-formed in many BME departmentsmay be one of the areas attracting

people who are deaf or hard ofhearing. For example, at JohnsHopkins University School of Medi-cine, the Center for Hearing Sci-ences has a close relationship withBME. They received postdoctoraltraining in this program, whereReiss is finishing her graduatework. The academic backgroundsof Raphael, Ratnanather, and Reissexemplify the multidisciplinary na-ture of BME. Raphael has a bache-lor’s in Physics from University ofNotre Dame and a Ph.D. in Bio-physics from the University ofRochester, Ratnanather has a Ph.D.in Mathematics from the Universityof Oxford, and Reiss has a bache-lor’s in Mechanical Engineeringfrom Princeton University. Re-search in auditory sciences hasalso attracted other deaf peoplesuch as: Henry Adler, who is doingpostdoctoral research on cochlearouter hair cells at the National In-stitute on Deafness and OtherCommunication Disorders at theNational Institues of Health; JohnBrigande, who will start as Assis-tant Professor of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery at OHSU thissummer after completing postdoc-toral research on the morphologi-cal development of the cochlea atPurdue University, and RayGoldsworthy, who is currently do-ing doctoral research in noise re-duction in cochlear implants in the

Dr. J. Tilak Ratnanather, assistant research professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineeringat Johns Hopkins University, and Lina Reiss, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering, look onas Dominic Pisano, a freshman biomedical engineering major, displays MRI scans of reconstructedbrain surfaces. Will Kirk/Johns Hopkins University.

24 VOLTA VOICES • March/April 2003

Harvard–Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology Speech and HearingProgram.

Biomedical engineers must becompetent in chemical, physical,mathematical and computer sci-ences as well as the life sciencesand engineering. They must learnto work alongside physicians andbiologists and apply engineeringskills to solve biomedical and bio-logical problems at the body, or-gan, organelle, cellular, and mole-cular levels. BME historicallystarted with an emphasis in instru-mentation and medical imagingand now has expanded into therealms of computational biology,biomaterials, molecular and cellu-lar bioengineering and tissue engi-neering.

The recent establishment of BMEundergraduate programs at sever-al universities is due in part togenerous financial support fromthe Whitaker Foundation(www.whitaker.org). An integra-tive philosophy of BME educationhas now begun to emerge. Thismeans that courses have to be de-signed such that traditional engi-neering skills are taught in a med-ical or biological context.Ratnanather is working with acouple of undergraduates on aninteractive web course in biomed-ical imaging that is targeted atphysicians and life scientists whowill be using image analysis soft-ware developed at Johns HopkinsUniversity. At Rice University,

Raphael has developed a thermo-dynamics course unique to bio-engineering students as well as in-troducing a new course in sensoryneuroengineering that covers theauditory system. These core cours-es provide the undergraduates thenecessary interdisciplinary skills tosolve challenging problems inteams.

The interdisciplinary nature of BMEpermits the student to choose aconcentration in a traditional engi-neering discipline. The choice is upto the interests and career goals ofthe student. An aspiring neurosur-geon could consider mechanicalengineering to learn how to devel-op methods for robotic surgery orcomputer science to develop soft-ware to minimize surgical errors.Design projects give students achance to integrate traditional en-gineering skills and solve a biologi-cal problem. As Brian Kelly says,“There are endless opportunities inbiomedical engineering. I hope Ican develop and manufacture med-ical devices in the future as well asdevelop some biomaterials thatstick to each other while safe touse in MRI (such as cochlear im-plants). Also, I love to study me-chanics. That’s why I chose thepath comparable to mechanical en-gineering.”

According to Reiss, it is evidentthat BME benefits people whohave demonstrated that they canachieve a good deal despite theirhearing loss and contribute

something unique toward helpingothers. No doubt influenced bythe subdiscipline of auditory re-search, BME has welcomed thecontributions of the deaf and hardof hearing and has been accom-modating in providing necessaryassisting services such as remotecaptioning.

The biomedical engineering indus-try is expected to become an im-portant and critical component ofhealth care delivery, resulting in anincreased demand for trained bio-medical engineers who will be in aposition to make substantial contri-butions to the well being ofmankind. Students who are deaf orhard of hearing are encouraged toconsider BME as either an under-graduate major or a graduate majorespecially in light of substantialfederal funds and industrial intern-ships that will support studentsfrom underrepresented communi-ties in biomedical research.

Drs. Raphael and Ratnanather dedi-cate this article to Murray B. Sachs,Ph.D., Massey Director of BME,Johns Hopkins University, whoseoutstanding leadership in BME edu-cation and research in the auditorysystem attracted people who are deafor hard of hearing to Johns HopkinsUniversity.

RESOURCES

See http://coop.jsc.nasa.gov/biog-raphy/bios/halackak.htm and alsoVolta Voices Nov/Dec 2002 issue.