Last week I visited George Mason University to attend a bioengineering seminar on Ultrasound Characterization of the Vulnerable Carotid Plaque. The drive to Fairfax, Virginia, through DC morning traffic didn’t leave time for coffee before the seminar, but as it turns out, the presentation proved so stimulating that I didn’t miss the caffeine. Kirk Beach, PhD, MD, delivered the course with such humor and warmth, such infectious curiosity, that in his hands technical theory sounded like a real page-turner of a mystery.
The seminar was hosted by GM’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Many attendees were engineering faculty or graduate students – not the more clinical audience I’m accustomed to – which made the seminar all the more intriguing. While clearly the biological nature of vessels was not lost on the engineers, it seemed from their questions and comments that their more compelling interest was in the mechanical details of vessel architecture. Observing hemodynamics and tissue strain through the eyes of engineers, I must say, torqued my perspective!
Dr. Beach, with degrees in medicine and in electrical and chemical engineering, is certainly at home in the blended environment of bioengineering, and so is his colleague, Mason faculty member Siddhartha Sikdar, PhD. Author of several articles on sonographic imaging of tissue vibration, Dr. Sikdar conducts research, both in his lab at George Mason and at the NIH, into novel ways of using ultrasound to investigate cardiovascular disease.
Most interesting day! But before tackling the Beltway to go home, I hit the nearest Starbucks.
Posted by Kathi Borok 