University of Maryland Merges Engineering and Medicine to Turn Ideas into Businesses

It looks like a rolling suitcase, a mask and tubes, but for some people who can’t breathe properly, the device will mean freedom.

Those with damaged lungs awaiting a transplant, who are too ill for surgery, or who are simply temporarily injured, normally must remain hooked up to bulky machines in a hospital to stay alive. But a new invention, developed by engineers and doctors at the University of Maryland, means they could soon return home and get on with their lives.

“Grandpa can come over now,” Dr. Bartley P. Griffith, a professor of transplant surgery at the university’s medical school, said of the artificial lung support device he helped create and market before its purchase by Johnson & Johnson.

It’s the kind of innovation that University of Maryland officials hope to foster in a new center at the University of Maryland BioPark, where faculty, students and researchers from the College Park and Baltimore campuses will share laboratories and other spaces.

The center is the university’s latest effort to develop and commercialize technology that officials say will save and improve people’s lives. It will also be part of the region’s growing biotechnology industry, which taps local universities such as Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, as well as nonprofit organizations and private companies, to develop and commercialize cutting-edge technologies.

Officials held a ceremony Friday with officials from the Baltimore-based University of Maryland School of Medicine and the College Park-based A. James Clark School of Engineering and others, to show the laboratories encompassing the fourth floor of the facility. 4MLKDowntown Baltimore’s newest BioPark building.

They accepted a $10 million gift from the Edward St. John Foundation and officially named the center the Edward & Jennifer St. John Center for Translational Engineering and Medicine.

Edward St. John, businessman and philanthropist, graduated with an engineering degree from the University of Maryland at College Park and has previously donated millions of dollars to other projects at the university and the affiliated medical system.

St. John said the center would be the place where “diverse minds come together, each bringing their unique expertise, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in medicine.”

Dr. Bruce E. Jarrell, president of the University of Maryland at Baltimore, both a physician and an engineer, said such centers, which merge engineering and medical research, were “missing from the landscape” until these recent years.

“Together (the researchers) will discover innovative treatments and breakthrough technologies that simply cannot emerge when everyone works in isolation,” he said. “This synergy opens up exciting new possibilities for translating research into tangible solutions that will address today’s most pressing health challenges.”

State officials have noted that other regions of the country are strong competition for Maryland’s biotechnology industry.

The region has no shortage of research, but officials say it can fails to attract investment and transform this research into products. Once launched, a start-up often ends up move to another state with a more established biotechnology industry.

In recent years, the state has been designated as a federal technology centerallowing it to compete for funding, and launched several types of incubators to help businesses get started and overcome investment and regulatory hurdles.

A big investment of $100 million was made a little over a year ago by Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti. Its foundation started a non-profit organization called Blackbird to help direct promising therapies from local academic labs to businesses, providing funding and advice.

College Park President Darryll J. Pines of the University of Maryland said the new The center will give an advantage to the state.

“Whether it is the invention of new devices and instruments or improved analysis, this center will lead the way in advancing how clinicians work and how patients heal,” he said .

Lab space will occupy the fourth floor of the new building. Downstairs will be an incubator for startups where mentoring and other resources will be available. There will also be space in the building for students enrolling in new programs that will offer, for example, an undergraduate degree in engineering and training in medicine.

Researchers touted their proximity to other institutions in the building and the BioPark, located across Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, the University of Maryland School of Medicine and other schools.

Giuliano Scarcelli, associate professor in Fischell’s Department of Bioengineering, touted his collaboration with Dr. Osamah J. Saeedi, professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences in the School of Medicine, in a video released Friday by officials to highlight the new technology he is developing to monitor eye pressure and help detect glaucoma.

“You can’t do this over Zoom,” he said.