Brown Engineering Professor Yuri Bazilevs and Associate Professor Anita Shukla have each been elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows. Representing a select group of the top two percent of medical and biological engineering professionals, the College of Fellows is comprised of those engineers who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering and medicine research, practice, or education” and to "the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of medical and biological engineering or developing/implementing innovative approaches to bioengineering education."
The 162 inductees were formally inducted during the AIMBE Annual Event at the Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel in Arlington, Va. on March 25, 2024.
Bazilevs, the E. Paul Sorensen Professor of Engineering, was nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the College of Fellows “for pioneering highly impactful predictive computational methods and technology enabling the solution of contemporary problems in biomedical engineering and sciences.”
He works in the general area of computational mechanics, engineering, and sciences, developing advanced fluid-structure interaction (FSI) methods and tools to build predictive models for a wide range of applications in mechanics. He is also one of the original developers of Isogeometric Analysis (IGA), a computational methodology that aims to bridge the gap between Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA).
Bazilevs’ research addresses complex problems in the areas of renewable energy, such as assessing damage to wind turbines due to extreme conditions in harsh offshore environments; air-blast fluid-structure interaction for assessing the response of structures to terrorist attacks; and biomechanics and medicine, such as hemodynamics in blood vessels and the heart, as well as medical devices including blood pumps and artificial hearts.
In 2022, Bazilevs received the International Association for Computational Mechanics (IACM) Computational Mechanics Award. He is a past recipient of the Materials Division Centennial Mid-Career Award and the Gustus L. Larson Memorial Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and a fellow of the United States Association for Computational Mechanics (USACM) and the Engineering Mechanics Institute (EMI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). In 2018, he was awarded the ASCE’s Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize.
He has published more than 190 refereed archival journal papers which have been cited about 42,500 times. He was named a Highly Cited Researcher in both Engineering and Computer Science categories six years in a row, a list which recognizes world-class researchers selected for their exceptional research performance, demonstrated by production of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top one percent by citations for field and year in Web of Science. His h-index, a measure of research productivity and citation impact, is 87. He has co-authored two books, one on IGA and one on FSI.
Shukla, the Elaine I. Savage Associate Professor of Engineering at Brown University, was nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the College of Fellows “for outstanding contributions to the fields of antimicrobial biomaterials, responsive biomaterials, and drug delivery.”
Shukla is a leader in biomaterials and is at the forefront of biomaterials research in infectious diseases and drug delivery. Her research is focused on developing biomaterials to address global health issues in infectious diseases including rapidly rising antimicrobial resistance, increasing severity of infections, and a dwindling pipeline of antimicrobial therapeutics. She has pioneered new approaches in materials chemistry that will make lasting contributions to the development of new antimicrobial drug delivery systems, biomaterial sensors, and biofunctional interfaces aimed at prevention and treatment of infections. Her work includes developing new microbe-responsive hydrogel drug-delivery systems and targeted nanoparticle therapeutics aimed at effectively treating life-threatening bacterial and fungal infections while limiting harmful side-effects and development of antimicrobial resistance.
She was named one of 10 Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Scholars by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2023, and was selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering (NAE)’s 26th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering (FOE) symposium in 2021. She also served on the organizing committee for the NAE’s 27th annual U.S. FOE symposium in 2022. In 2021, Shukla was awarded a Dr. Ralph and Marian Falk Medical Research Trust Transformational Award, intended to provide the bridge to the technology transfer process for moving an exciting health care innovation to the next step in commercial development.
Shukla also received a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER award in 2020, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2019, the nation’s highest honor for scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. She has been a recipient of an Office of Naval Research Director of Research Early Career Grant, and a Brown University Early Career Research Achievement Award and Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
AIMBE Fellows are among the most distinguished medical and biological engineers including three Nobel Prize laureates and 22 Presidential Medal of Science and/or Technology and Innovation awardees. Additionally, 214 Fellows have been inducted to the National Academy of Engineering, 117 inducted to the National Academy of Medicine, and 48 inducted to the National Academy of Sciences.
Bazilevs and Shukla become the ninth and tenth AIMBE Fellows from Brown University, joining Professor Edith Mathiowitz (2002: For pioneering work in the area of microencapsulation), Professor John P. Donoghue (2006: For significant contributions to the field of neuroscience, and for developing a neuroprosthetic device for patients with spinal cord injury), Provost Frank Doyle (2009: For creative leadership in developing the field of computational systems biological engineering), Professor Vicki L. Colvin (2012: For contributions for understanding the biocombatability and toxicology of nanomaterials and their effect on the environment), Sorensen Family Dean of Engineering Tejal A. Desai (2012: For seminal contributions to innovative drug delivery technology), Professor Jeffrey R. Morgan (2016: For outstanding contributions to genetic engineering, tissue engineering, 3D cell culture and biomedical engineering education), Professor Anubhav Tripathi (2016: For advancing understanding biochemical and biomolecular processes in microchip environments), and Professor Kimani Toussaint (2021: For outstanding contributions to biomedical engineering using both novel photonic materials and optical imaging systems).
About AIMBE
AIMBE is the authoritative voice and advocate for the value of medical and biological engineering to society. AIMBE’s mission is to recognize excellence, advance public understanding, and accelerate medical and biological innovation. No other organization brings together academic, industry, government, and scientific societies to form a highly influential community advancing medical and biological engineering. AIMBE’s mission drives advocacy initiatives into action on Capitol Hill and beyond.