PULSE_20131101_Nov_2013

IEEEPULSENovember/December 2013

Volume 4 Number 6http://magazine.embs.org

A MAGAZINE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY

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QmagsTHE WORLDS NEWSSTAND


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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 IEEE PULSE 1

4 FROM THE EDITOR8 PRESIDENTS MESSAGE

10 PERSPECTIVES ON GRADUATE LIFE

48 STATE OF THE ART

50 RETROSPECTROSCOPE66 CONTINUING EDUCATION68 CHAPTER NEWS70 CALENDAR

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPUL.2013.2279631

12 New World of 3-D Printing Offers Completely New Ways of Thinking

by Leslie Mertz

15 Dream It, Design It, Print It in 3-D by Leslie Mertz

22 Adding Value in Additive Manufacturing

by Jim Banks

27 The Body Printed by Shannon Fischer

32 Moving the Science of Behavioral Change into the 21st Century: Part 2

by Niilo Saranummi, Donna Spruijt-Metz,Stephen S. Intille, Ilkka Korhonen,Wendy J. Nilsen, and Misha Pavel

34 Healthy Apps by Bonnie Spring, Marientina Gotsis,

Ana Paiva, and Donna Spruijt-Metz

41 Systems Modeling of Behavior Change

by Daniel E. Rivera and Holly B. Jimison

FEATURES

ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/SHUMPC

COVER IMAGE: 3D SYSTEMS

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013 Volume 4 Number 6

http://magazine.embs.org

pg.60COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

IEEEPULSEA MAGAZINE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY

pg. 27


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2 IEEE PULSE NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013

IEEE PULSE

IEEE PERIODICALSMAGAZINESDEPARTMENT

MANAGING EDITORJessica Barragu

SENIOR ART DIRECTORJanet Dudar

ASSISTANTART DIRECTORGail A. Schnitzer

PRODUCTION COORDINATORTheresa L. Smith

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENTMANAGERSusan Schneiderman+1 732 562 [email protected]: +1 732 981 1855

ADVERTISINGPRODUCTION MANAGERFelicia Spagnoli

PRODUCTION DIRECTORPeter M. Tuohy

EDITORIAL DIRECTORDawn Melley

STAFF DIRECTOR,PUBLISHINGOPERATIONSFran Zappulla


IEEE prohibits discrimination, harassment, and bullying. For more information, visit http://www.ieee.org/web/aboutus/whatis/policies/p9-26.html.

MISSION STATEMENTThe Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society of the IEEE advances the applica-tion of engineering sciences and technology to medicine and biology, promotes the pro-fession, and provides global leadership for the benefit of its members and humanity by disseminating knowledge, setting standards, fostering professional development, and rec-ognizing excellence.

IEEE Pulse (ISSN 2154-2287) (IPEUD6) is published bimonthly by The Institute of Electrical and Elec-tronics Engineers, Inc., IEEE Headquarters: 3 Park Ave., 17th Floor, New York, NY 10016-5997. NY Telephone +1 212 419 7900. IEEE Service Center (for orders, subscriptions, address changes, Edu-cational Activities, Region/Section/Student Services): 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854. NJ Tele-phone: +1 732 981 0060. Price/Publication Information: Individual copies: IEEE Members $20.00 (first copy only), nonmembers $108.00 per copy. Subscriptions: $5.00 per year (included in Society fee) for each member of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Nonmember subscrip-tion prices available on request. Copyright and Reprint Permissions: Abstracting is permitted with credit to the source. Libraries are permitted to photocopy beyond the limits of U.S. Copyright Law for private use of patrons: 1) those post-1977 articles that carry a code at the bottom of the first page, provided the per-copy fee indicated in the code is paid through the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA; 2) pre-1978 articles without fee. For all other copying, reprint, or republication information, write to: Copyrights and Permission Department, IEEE Publish-ing Services, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA. Copyright 2013 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to IEEE Pulse, IEEE, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA. Canadian GST #125634188. PRINTED IN USA

Editorial Correspondence: Address to Michael R. Neuman, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Michigan Technical University, 1400 Townsend Dr. Houghton, MI 49931-1295, USA. Voice: +1 906 487 1949. E-mail: [email protected].

Indexed in: Current Contents (Clinical Practice), Engineering Index (Bioengineering Abstracts), Inspec, Excerpta Medica, Index Medicus, MEDLINE, RECAL Information Services, and listed in Citation Index.

All materials in this publication represent the views of the authors only and not those of the EMBS or IEEE.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEFMichael R. NeumanMichigan Technological UniversityHoughton, Michigan, USA

DEPUTY EDITOR-IN-CHIEFSilvestro Micera Scuola Superiore SantAnnaPisa, Italy

ASSOCIATE EDITORCynthia WeberMichigan Technological UniversityHoughton, Michigan, USA

EDITORIAL BOARDShanbao TongShanghai Jiao Tong UniversityShanghai, China

Stuart MeldrumRetired from Norfolk and Norwich Health Care NHS TrustNorwich, UK

Semahat DemirIstanbul Kltr UniversityIstanbul, Turkey

Samuel K. MooreIEEE SpectrumNew York, New York, USA

Yongmin KimPohang University of Science and TechnologyPohang, South Korea

Patricia J. SoterinCommunicationsMichigan Technological UniversityHoughton, Michigan, USA

Ann BradyDirector Program in Scientific and Technical CommunicationMichigan Technological UniversityHoughton, Michigan, USA

CONTRIBUTING EDITORSA Look AtJean-Louis CoatrieuxUniversity of Rennes France

Book ReviewsPaul KingVanderbilt UniversityNashville, Tennessee, USA

PatentsMaurice M. KleeFairfield, Connecticut, USA

Point of ViewGail BauraKeck Graduate InstituteClaremont, California, USA

RetrospectroscopeMax ValentinuzziUniversidad Nacional de Tucumn and Universidad de Buenos AiresArgentina

Senior DesignJay R. GoldbergMarquette UniversityMilwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

State of the ArtArthur T. JohnsonUniversity of Maryland, USA

Continuing EducationCristian A. LinteMayo Clinic Rochester, Minnesota, USA

Students CornerSubhamoy MandalHelmholtz Zentrum MunchenInstitut fur Biologische und Medizinisch,Germany

Student ActivitiesLisa LazareckCity UniversityLondon, UK

GOLDMatthias ReumannIBM ResearchCarlton, VIC, Australia


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FROM THE EDITOR


ngineering is involved with many binary quantities. The most familiar are the ones and zeros of digital elec-

tronics; yet, there are many more binary situations, ranging from whether a signal crosses a threshold to management deci-sions on whether to fund a project. Even a decision on shall we break for lunch? can be considered binary, with strong bias toward the positive when we are hungry. Binary quantities are concerned with yes or no types of decisions: is it or isnt it, has something occurred or not, should we turn right or left when we come to a fork in the road, and so on. Essentially, binary quantities represent two distinct alternatives: if you choose one, you cannot choose the other; they cannot coexist.

So what does this have to do with bio-medical engineering? As I have said so many times in this column, biomedical engineering covers a wide range of activi-ties as well as a wide variety of engineer-ing and science disciplines. How, then, could it possibly be binary? I certainly consider biomedical engineering to be more of a continuum than a dichotomy; yet, I am seeing signs that a more binary structure is emerging. There are biomedi-cal engineers who are more concerned with hardware: engineering devices applied to mostly medical and some bio-logical problems. These engineers focus more on hardware and software and often produce some sort of device that can ultimately become a commercial product. They can either be trained as a biomedical engineer or in one of the more traditional

engineering disciplines, such as mechan-ical or electrical engineering. In the past, employers would often hire mechanical engineers to work on the mechanical aspects of biomedical device production or electrical engineers to deal with the chips and passive components involved in biomedical electronic design. Aspiring biomedical engineering students con-sidered augmenting their undergraduate degree with a minor in one of the traditional engineer-ing disciplines or perhaps even a joint degree, but there was hardly ever more than minimal life sc ience in thei r back-ground. Often, these were the students who got the best jobs, at least accord-ing to them. This was what people of my generation thought biomedical engineer-ing was all about, and those of us in aca-demia designed curricula to support this kind of biomedical engineering activity.

Things can be quite different now. When I enter a biomedical engineer-ing laboratory today, it is easy to think that maybe I am in the wrong place. The laboratory looks more like one that carries out basic life science research than an engineering laboratory. Oscil-loscopes, signal generators, materials testers, and machine shops have been replaced by microscopes, cell cultures, centrifuges, and biosafety cabinets. Lab workers all wear white coats, and some may even wear facemasks over their mouths and noses. Petri dishes and incubators instead of circuit boards and hardness testers fill bench tops. These

labs are concerned with applied biology and look more like a life science labora-tory in a medical school than a facility for engineering activities.

These two types of biomedical engi-neering laboratories show the extreme differences in the various areas that make up biomedical engineering. One might consider them to be at opposite ends of the continuum of diverse disciplines in our interdisciplinary field. Nevertheless, these should not be considered binary poles of our discipline. Once you step into one of these labs, however, you may get a different impression. Just ask one of the white-coat-wearing workers how she or he could optimize the biologic process she or he is studying or how the reaction fol-

lows the laws of thermo-dynamics, and she or he might not know what you are talking about. On the other hand, the engineer in the devices laboratory wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans might give a simi-lar response when asked about the Krebs cycle.

Indeed, this dichotomy of biomedical engineering

must be avoided, although some of us are, in essence, becoming life scientists even as we still call ourselves biomedical engi-neers. We work in areas such as tissue engineering or regenerative medicine, proteomics, or molecular and cell biol-ogy; therefore, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate us from scientists who study only these fields. What then makes us biomedical engineers? Work in these areas can be biomedical engineering just as much as designing a prosthetic hand is biomedical engineering, even if the two areas seem quite different. I look at the more biological aspects of biomedical engi-neering as being equally important in our profession as are the physical aspects.

Just as a designer of a prosthetic hand needs to be familiar with robotics, elec-tronics, and biomechanics, a tissue engi-neer needs to be familiar with stem cell

Binary BMEMichael R. Neuman


Date of publication: 6 November 2013

E

Biomedical engineering covers

a wide range of activities as well as a wide variety

of engineering and science disciplines.


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IEEE Medal for Innovations in Healthcare TechnologyRECOGNIZING THE EXTRAORDINARY

For outstanding contributions and/orinnovations in engineering within the fields of medicine, biology, and healthcare technology.

IEEE Medal for Innovations in Healthcare Technology, established in 2009.

The areas of healthcare technology recognized by this medal include, but are not limited to: bio-signal processing; biomedical imaging and image processing; bio-instrumentation; bio-sensors; bio micro/nano technologies; bio-informatics; computational biology and systems biology; cardiovascular and respiratory systems engineering; cellular and tissue engineering; bio-materials; bio robotics; bio-mechanics; therapeutic and diagnostic systems; medical device design and development; healthcare information systems; telemedicine; and emerging technologies in biomedicine (e.g.biophotonics).

PRESENTED TO - An individual or team, up to five in number

PRIZE Recipient(s) will receive a gold medal, a bronze replica, certificate, and US$20,000 honorarium (shared equally among all recipients).

SPONSOR - IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society

Nomination guidelines and forms can be downloaded from the IEEE Awards Web site at: http://www.ieee.org/about/awards/medals/healthcare.html

Nomination Deadline: 1 July (Annually)

Selection criteria include:

(a) impact on the profession and/or society

(b) succession of significant technical or other contributions

(c) leadership in accomplishing worthwhile goal(s)

(d) previous honors

(e) other achievements as evidenced by publications or patents or other evidence

(f) quality of nomination



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biology, tissue culture techniques, and molecular biology. Indeed, on closer examination, these two areas are similar in that each researcher applies an area of basic science or engineering to address an important problem in the life sciences or clinical medicine. A biomedical engineer working in tissue engi-neering must understand basic biology to learn how to regenerate organs to replace failed ones. In doing so, this professional applies fundamental biol-ogy to an engineering problem: how can we gen-erate replacement parts for an individual patient? What makes it different from pure biology is that the biomedical engineer can apply the quantitative engi-neering approach to the biologic prob-lem. (Biologists are catching on to this approach, too.)

In practice, this is no different from what the biomedical engineer designing a prosthetic hand does. She or he needs to understand hand anatomy, function, and biomechanics as well as basic and applied physics to be able to apply these to the design problem. Thus, the two approaches to biomedical engineeringbiological and physicalare essentially doing the same thing but starting from entirely dif-ferent origins. Does this make biomedical engineering binary? I hope not, but we must be vigilant to avoid the development of this binary thinking in the future.

What now contributes to making bio-medical engineering binary is that the biomedical engineers focused on applied biology and those focused on applied phys-ical science appear to be taking different pathways to their ultimate objectives. We must avoid the physical-science-oriented

biomedical engineer hav-ing little understanding and appreciation of the life science side of bio-medical engineering and the biology-oriented bio-medical engineer hav-ing little understanding and appreciation for the chemistry, physics, and engineering background so important for his or her

area of emphasis. I frequently hear gradu-ate students working in tissue engineering asking why they need to know biome-chanics or medical instrumentation, while the device-oriented biomedical engineering students ask why basic biol-ogy is so important for them. Ultimately, this is where the dichotomy develops. We all recognize the importance of breadth as well as depth in aspects of biomedical engineering (see my column in the July/August 2013 issue of IEEE Pulse) but often fail to see the importance of crossing the increasingly diffuse interface between physical science and biology when con-sidering breadth. By understanding the many advances of modern biology, the device-oriented biomedical engi-neer is better equipped to design devices

while keeping the science related to the application in mind, and similarly, thebiology-oriented biomedical engineer can use the tools and techniques of the physi-cal and engineering sciences to address their life science problem.

To function optimally, these two areas of biomedical engineering should not be binary. Applied biologists have made many contributions based on engineer-ing principles. For example, a tissue engi-neered kidney need not look exactly like a natural one. Tissue engineers have grown replacement organ constructs on micro-fabricated silicon matrices that may not look like a kidney but still can function like one. Biomedical device engineers have developed analytical sensors based on the sensing molecules and structures in living cells. Neither could do this without a good understanding of much of the continuum of biomedical engineering disciplines.

Binary biomedical engineering? If we are moving in that direction, we need to reverse our course. Device- and biologi-cally based biomedical engineering are both important and encompass exciting new developments. Although our field can, no doubt, sustain its rapid growth as a binary discipline, we can do much bet-ter if we emphasize what interests us any-where along the continuum of disciplines but not forget the importance of being familiar with other aspects of our impor-tant field as well. Let us leave binary quantities for coin tossing and computer science/engineering.

The End of an Incredible JourneyWith this issue of IEEE Pulse, I end my term as editor-in-chief. It has been a wonderful six-year journey and an opportunity to, hopefully, improve this publication. As with any endeavor of this type, the leader may bask in the successes achieved, but the credit goes to many individuals too numerous to mention at this point, and there is too much of a risk of forgetting someone who should not be forgotten. However, there are some special people who I really want to mention. I want to give my special thanks to Associate Editor Cynthia Weber, whose influence on these pages will continue with our new editor-in-chief, Colin Brenan. Cynthias experience in magazine production; academic experience in writing and in teaching that important skill to scientists and engineers; and her collegial, collaborative, and gentle approach to dealing with an aging editor have been greatly appreciated. I also want to give special thanks to Debby Nowicki, former managing editor of the magazine, and Jessica Barragu, our current managing editor. Also, thanks go to

Deputy Editor Silvestro Micera. Their contributions to publishing an attractive, colorful, and readable magazine have been very special. It has been an incredible journey for me, and as with other wonderful journeys, the end must come; but also as with any fantastic journey, the memory of the experience will live on.

But wait a minutethe journey is not over! We are getting a new driver and a very exceptional one. Colin Brenans ideas for taking this magazine to the next level will make the journey even more exciting. He will accelerate the pulse of IEEE Pulse and bring us to new media. His experience as a successful entrepreneur will expand the focus of this publication as well as increase its relevance to our subscribers in the biomedical industry and beyond. I will be like you, dear readers, anxiously awaiting the next issues of this IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society flagship publication.

Mike Neuman

A biomedical engineer working in tissue engineering must understand basic

biology to learn how to regenerate organs to replace failed ones.


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Nominations are being sought for the following IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Awards for 2014. Each award recipient will receive a plaque/certificate, an honorarium, and reimbursement in travel expenses associated with attending the EMBS Awards Presentation at the 36th Annual International Conference of the Society. The 2014 conference will be held in Chicago, Illinois, USA, 27-31 August 2014 (http://embc.embs.org/2014/).

THE EMBS ACADEMIC CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Honorarium $2,500 USD/Travel Reimbursement up to $1,500 USDFor outstanding contribution and achievement in the field of Biomedical Engineering as an educator, researcher, developer, or administrator who has had a distinguished career of twenty years or more in the field of biomedical engineering. Accomplishments may be technological or theoretical and need not have proceeded the award date by any specific period of time. Individual must be a current member of EMBS.

THE EMBS PROFESSIONAL CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Honorarium $2,500 USD/Travel Reimbursement up to $1,500 USDFor outstanding contribution advancing Biomedical Engineering and its professional practices as a practicing biomedical engineer working in industry, government or other applied areas related to biomedical engineering. Accomplishments include, but are not limited to, technological advances, improvements in processes, or development of new products or procedures, and need not have preceded the award date by any specified period of time. Individual must be a current member of EMBS.

THE EMBS EARLY CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD Honorarium $1,000 USD/Travel Reimbursement up to $1,500 USDFor significant contributions to the field of biomedical engineering as evidenced by innovative research design, product development, patents, and/or publications made by an individual who is within 10 years of completing their highest degree at the time of the nomination and are a current member of EMBS.

THE EMBS DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD Honorarium $1,000 USD/Travel Reimbursement up to $1,500 USD For outstanding service and contributions to the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Accomplishments should be related to direct Society service and need not have preceded the award date by any specific period of time and individual must be a current member of EMBS.

Nomination Procedure

The required nomination packet consists of a two-page nomination form (see http://www.embs.org/award-nomination-announcement), a current CV and letters from three references along with their address, telephone, facsimile number and e-mail address. It is the responsibility of the nominator to contact the references and solicit letters of endorsement.

The complete nomination packet must be submitted online at http://www.embs.org/award-nomination-announcement and received no later than 17 January 2014 for the nominee to be considered for 2014. It is very desirable for nominations to be submitted well before the deadline.

For questions, please contact the EMB Executive Office ([email protected]).

IEEE EMBS Achievement & Service Awards

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

Submission Deadline: 17 January 2014



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PRESIDENTS MESSAGE


he 6th International IEEE Engineer-ing in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS) Neural Engineering Con-

ference was held 26 November, 2013, in San Diego, California (http://neuro.embs.org/2013/). It was a resounding success. Congratulations to the organiz-ers of the conference, Dr. Metin Akay (University of Houston) and Dr. Bin He (University of Minnesota) for their superb organization and promotion of the conference. Their concept of recruit-ing the worlds top neural engineers and neuroscientists as keynote speakers and scheduling the conference immediately before the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience proved to yield great results. The presence of more than 600 attendees made this conference a record for both the Neural Engineering Confer-ence and for the IEEE EMBS series of special topic conferences (http://embs.org/conferences-meetings).

The success of the conference is also the culmination of a long and dedicated development since the first Neural Engi-neering Conference held in Capri, Italy, in 2003. Dr. Akay showed great leadership and foresight in starting the conference, and he continued his efforts to steadily grow the conference as it moved to differ-ent locations: Arlington, Virginia (2005), Kohala Coast, Hawaii (2007), Antalya, Turkey (2009), and Cancun, Mexico (2011). The conference is notable for being truly international but also for its

strong emphasis on student awards and involvement and a strong representation of world leaders in neural engineering.

Neural engineering also takes center stage because of recent announcements regarding high-profile research programs in Europe and the United States. This past April, Pres-ident Obama announced a US$100 million public/pri-vate initiative to map the brain with the aim of pro-viding more basic knowl-edge that ultimately will help address major neu-rological disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, Alzheimers disease, and epilepsy. Its nicknameBRAIN, short for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnolo-giesemphasizes the neural engineering technologies that will play a major role in the initiative. Hence, we can look forward to the greater development of functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques, high-density electrode arrays, optical and electrical imaging of brain activity for human computer interfaces, and optoge-netic technologies for brain stimulation down to the single neuron level. Signifi-cant efforts will go toward what is becom-ing known as functional connectomics, or the study of the connections within the brain and how they encode information. The IEEE International Neural Engineer-ing Conference brought together many investigators who are at the cutting edge of all of these technologies.

The second high-profile project is the European Human Brain Project. It was started in 2012, with more than a billion euros in funding to be expended over a decade across more than 80 institutions, led by the Ecol Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. The high-level goals of the projects are similar in that the work of both should lead to a much greater under-standing of how the brain functions and provide the framework for investigating both pathologies of the brain and how the normal brain functions. The Human Brain Project includes supercomputer simulations of brain functioning based

on exceptionally realistic models with detail down to the level of individual neurons and conduction channels. Neural engi-neers, especially those heavily involved in com-putational modeling and informatics, are central to the effort.

The IEEE EMBS, led by Dr. He, which spon-sored the successful IEEE

EMBS Forum on Grand Challenges: Neural Engineering in 2010, will organize another forum on the BRAIN and Human Brain projects. The EMBS has a publica-tion dedicated to neural engineering [1], and has published multiple special issues on neural engineering and braincom-puter interface technology.

Neural engineering is truly taking cen-ter stage, and the IEEE EMBS is dedicated to promoting the field and serving our neu-ral engineering members.

Reference[1] IEEE Trans. Neural Syst. Rehab. Eng. [Online].

Available: http://embs.org/publications/ieee-

transactions/ieee-transactions-onneural-

systems-and-rehabilitation-engineering

Neural Engineering in the LimelightBruce Wheeler



T

Neural engineering also takes center stage

because of recent announcements

regarding high-profile research programs in

Europe and the United States.


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CALL FOR NOMINATIONS 2014Submission Deadline: 17 January 2014

IEEE EMBS Chapter Awards

Nominations are being sought for the following IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Awards for 2014. Each award recipient will receive a certificate, an honorarium, and reimbursement in travel expenses associated with attending the EMBS Awards Presentation at the EMBS Awards Presentation at the 36th Annual International Conference of the Society. The 2014 conference will be held in Chicago, Illinois, USA, 27-31 August 2014 (http://embc.embs.org/2014/).

EMBS OUTSTANDING CHAPTER AWARDHonorarium $1000 USD/Travel Reimbursement of up to $1,000 USDFor achievement in member development and delivering services to members of an EMBS Chapter during the previous calendar year. A single EMBS Chapter will be selected based on activities, community outreach and promotion of EMBS.

EMBS BEST NEW CHAPTER AWARDHonorarium $500 USD/Travel Reimbursement of up to $1,000For outstanding activities performed by a new EMBS Chapter within the first 12 months of Chapter formation. A single EMBS Chapter will be selected based on activities, community outreach and promotion of EMBS.

EMBS OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE AWARD for an EMBS Student Branch Chapter/ClubHonorarium $500 USD/Travel Reimbursement up to $1,000 USDFor achievement in demonstrating outstanding performance in promoting student interest and involvement in Biomedical Engineering during the previous calendar year. A single EMBS Student Branch Chapter or Club will be selected based on activities demonstrating initiative, innovation, and creativity; areas of progress and improvement; significant impact in biomedical engineering education; and contributions to the profession.

EMBS BEST NEW STUDENT BRANCH CHAPTER or CLUB AWARDHonorarium $300 USD/Travel Reimbursement of up to $1,000For outstanding activities performed by a new EMBS Student Club or Chapter within the first 12 months of formation. A single EMBS Student Branch Chapter or Club will be selected based on activities demonstrating initiative, innovation, and creativity; areas of progress and improvement; significant impact in biomedical engineering education; and contributions to the profession.

Nomination Procedure

The required nomination packet consists of a one-page nomination form and supporting documentation as outlined in the nomination form (see embs.org/chapter-award-nomination).

The complete nomination packet must be submitted via email to [email protected] no later than 17 January 2014. It is very desirable for nominations to be submitted well before the deadline.

For questions, please contact the EMB Executive Office ([email protected])



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PERSPECTIVES ON GRADUATE LIFE

he days are getting shorter, tem-peratures have cooled, and multiple moving vans have been spotted on

my block. The new class of graduate stu-dents has arrived.

Usually, I love meeting new people, making new friends, and being useful. There is no better time for this than new student orientation, one of the rare periods when graduate students are outgoing and have the luxury of spending their time at multiple social activities in one week. As the vice president of the Engineering Grad-uate Student Council at Columbia Uni-versity, I tend to get pretty excited about welcoming the new kids and spend a great deal of orientation week outside of the lab, organizing and leading events. This year, however, my emotions are mixed, and I feel more reserved than in years past.

It has nothing to do with the new stu-dents themselves and everything to do with the fact that I am starting my fourth year in my Ph.D. program. The controlled chaos of planning orientation week over the last two months and now its arrival have only reinforced, in the most agoniz-ing way possible, that I have been here for a really long time without a lot to show for it. I feel frustrated, a little disappointed in myself, anxious about my lack of progress, and stir crazy. In each of the countless introductions I have made this week (and will still make in the weeks to come), the same question inevitably gets lobbed at me after the initial pleasantriesWhat year of your Ph.D. are you in?

Toward the end of the last spring semester, a visiting professor in my lab kindly asked how my Ph.D. thesis was progressing. I admitted to her that I felt that I had achieved less than I should

have by that point, and I worried that I was falling behind the rest of my class-mates. I was already bracing myself for the moment I would be forced to acknowledge that I would be at Columbia much longer than the department average of 5.5 years. She chuckled knowingly and assured me that my feelings were quite on point with what all Ph.D. students should be expe-riencing as they look toward their fourth year and predicted that my research would be picking up soon enough. Before I knew it, she foretold, I would be well on my way to graduating.

I remember being a junior in college, polling the graduate students I worked with to see if they thought I should apply to Ph.D. programs. At the time, I was surprised by their thoughtful pauses and how subdued and measured they sounded when they finally responded. From the outside looking in, their lives seemed so interesting and exciting, even liberating. They made their own sched-ules and performed groundbreaking research every day. However, it was clear from the way they spoke that they were attempting to walk the fine line between dissuading me from doing something I might love and be great at and being hon-est about how stressful and dishearten-ing graduate school can be at times. It is a bold gamble, betting your future on the outcome of some grand ideas and overly optimistic plans you came up with while soaping up in the shower. They told me to go for it, but to remember it was an endurance game, a measure of stamina, and the somewhat pathetic desire to just finish what you have started. I took their words at face value and thought I under-stood, but the years have given them greater weight and depth.

I am glad that I took the leap. I think I really would have regretted not giving

graduate school a chance. I am not com-petitive by nature, but I have high expec-tations for myself. I would have always wondered if I could have done it, should have done itif I had what it takes. I went into graduate school for all the usual and right reasons: I loved science; I loved all of my bench research experiences in col-lege; I loved the idea of making a contribu-tion to society by advancing the medical field. It seemed like the perfect melding of all my passions into one career. There was no doubt in my mind that I would get my Ph.D. degree, continue on into a post-doctoral program, and apply for a tenure-track professorship position one day. I set my sights on this career path at age 18, and with every passing year, my desire to achieve that position of status and success and apparent wisdom grew stronger.

Then, I went to graduate school and grew up. I discovered things about myself that I thought would have been revealed in college. I did not know that I had more growing up to do. I learned that I was capa-ble of feeling a level of anxiety and depres-sion that was so debilitating I actively avoided my lab and shunned my col-leagues. I had panic attacks when I received e-mails from my supervisor asking for updates and data. It would take 15 min for my heart rate to drop back down to normal and for my jaw to unclench. I sought out a therapist for the first time. I felt like an imposter and a failure, and I did not know how to cope. I had never expected to have to cope. I learned that I need regular mile-stones and checkpoints with my supervisor to feel like I have accomplished anything. I need constant feedback to feel validated in my work. I need guidance, maybe more than the average graduate student should expect. I need to feel supported.

With all of these revelations, I have begun to wonder if going to graduate school was really the right decision for me. The emotional toll it has taken seems to indicate that my personality is ill suited for this type of environment. As I have discovered, loving science is not enough to make you a great Ph.D. student. There

The Home StretchZen Liu

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is some other fundamental quality that a person needs to have to be good at this, and I am not sure that I have it. I have no idea what it is or what to call it, but I can recognize it when I see it in other people.

I have had countless philosophical discussions lately with myself and with friends about the idea of having a true call-ing in life, which, for now, sounds a bit too much like a fairy tale. There is no question that my dream of becoming an academic hotshot has faded completely, and I would not be surprised if I ended up in a job that

does not even require a Ph.D. degree, to say nothing of a biomedical engineering background. Yet, I have to believe that I wanted to be here and fought to be here for a reason. I have to believe that I would always be a better scientist than I would be a musician or an artist or any other thing I had considered becoming as a child. Some days, I think I will never see the light at the end of the tunnel (of my thesis), and thatmore than anythingfeels like failure. And then I tell myself to calm down, to stay the course, and to wait

for that magical moment that is supposed to hit me this year, when all of my experi-ments will start working and my data will become significant. I am waiting to feel like I might someday graduate, at which point I can finally check that task off my lifes to-do list.

Zen Liu is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University.

do not recall a time prior to medical or graduate school when worklife balance was explicitly talked about. If you said

that you wanted to be a doctor, a scien-tist, lawyer, consultant, or banker, people were always excited by your ambition and encouraged you to follow your dreams. It seems as if it is only years after you have committed to any of these careers that anyone mentions you will likely have long working hours, which can be devastating to your personal life and make a healthy worklife balance a tough goal to achieve. So you may think: maybe you just did not do adequate research or shadow enough people in these careers; maybe it is a sign of immaturity or naivety to acknowledge this complication so late in the game; maybe if you had thoroughly looked into your career, you would have known about the long hours and the difficulty of main-taining a personal life with your given profession. On the flip side, maybe these concerns do not really manifest until a certain age or stage of life, so they are eas-ily overlooked by young students in the early stages of their education and careers.

Regardless, worklife balance never seems to be discussed with students. To

make matters worse, younger students always look at the people at the end of the long road: the attending physician, the partner at the law or consulting firm, or the principal investigator of a lab. Their hours and overall lifestyle are generally better than those in earlier stages of their careers/training, they are generally mak-ing good money, and they are very knowl-edgeable in their field. Therefore, they do not seem to give the best representation for what their careers will actually be like. In my own personal experience, I shad-owed several attending surgeons. No one ever suggested that I shadow residents, medical students, or graduate students to learn about their experiences during their training, which all have a reputation for being intense. Even if you had such an experience, it is hard to find people will-ing to be completely honest about their training or people without hindsight bias (who, in hindsight, claim that everything was not so bad).

All of that is to say that worklife bal-ance is a tough problem to solve. On the one hand, you want to be really good at what you do and choose a respectable career (best possible scientist or physician in this case). On the other hand, you do not want the path to becoming a good sci-entist and/or physician to consume such

a large portion of your life that you end up a one-dimensional person with only work in your life. The problem that I have been witnessing is the following: there will always be someone willing to give up more of his personal life than you and spend more time working. This is impossi-ble to compete with unless you have luck on your side or you match your competi-tors intensity. Therefore, are you forced to make great sacrifices or accept mediocre success? You could just hope to be some combination of lucky and naturally tal-ented to be able to achieve success without destroying your personal life, but that is a lot to hope for.

Working in a lab adds an additional layer of complication due to the loose cor-relation between number of hours worked and the resulting reportable data/progress. It has always seemed that the general key to success is to work really hard. If you work really hard, it will likely be noticed and rewarded. I am pretty sure that this is the case in medicine from my limited experience; however, this is far from the case in research. The paradoxical prob-lem is that you have to work more when your experiments are not working (and you have little to show for your efforts), and you have to work a lot less when your experiments are working (and you have a lot to show for your efforts). It seems like you are lazy and/or slacking when you do not have a lot of data to present, regard-less of how much you have been working.

Looking ForwardMatthew C. Canver



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By Leslie Mertz

ith stories about everything from a three-dimensional (3-D)-printed tracheal implant used in an infant to a 3-D-printed replacement for 75% of a mans skull, a media firestorm is swirling

around this seemingly new technology, but what exactly is 3-D printing? How is it being used today,

and what is its true potential in the biomedical arena? Renowned robotics engineer Hod Lipson, coauthor of Fabricated: The New World of 3D Printing [1], and director of the Creative Machines Lab at Cor-nell Universitys Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engi-neering in Ithaca, New York, spent some time with IEEE Pulse in a wide-ranging conversation about the past, present, and future of 3-D printing and its implications for biomedical engineering.

IEEE Pulse: What is 3-D printing?Lipson: Basically, its a process of manufacturing arbitrarily

shaped objects by depositing material layer by layer. Just as you can imagine an ink-jet printer that spits out droplets of ink on a piece of paper and creates a picture, a 3-D printer spits out droplets of material and gradually builds up a 3-D object. There are maybe two dozen different processes available and hundreds of materials. Plastics, metals, and ceramicsthere is a whole range of materials, different speeds, and resolutions. What is common to all of them is that they all build up a 3-D object layer by layer from a stream of raw materials in almost an unconstrained shape: Any shape that you can imagine and that you can define in a computer design file, you can fabricate.

IEEE Pulse: Although 3-D printing is catching fire now, it isnt new. Whats its history?

Lipson: The technology has been around since the late 1980s, and its been used extensively for prototyping products. If you look around, almost anything in your office or in your car has probably been prototyped using a 3-D printer at some point in its early design.

IEEE Pulse: Why is 3-D printing getting so much atten-tion now?

Lipson: The awareness of this technology has shot up because of two basic factors. One is the ability to print in engi-neering materials, which has made it possible to make the end-use products, not just prototypes. The second reason is that the technology has crossed from the mainframe to the desktop, so to speak. In other words, it has gone from being technology that only existed in the back rooms of large industries to something that is available at the consumer scale. While these consumer-scale machines are still not a big part of industry, they have played an important role in the awareness of this technology and also in creating and exploring new business models.

IEEE Pulse: What pushed 3-D printing from the main-frame to the desktop?

Lipson: The technologys path is very similar to that of the first desktop computers, which were initially kits that people built at home. Those kits ushered the mainframe computer onto the desktop, enabling hobbyists to create new applica-tions that eventually developed into entirely new industries, like gaming. Back in 2006, the same thing happened with 3-D printing technology. Two open-source 3-D printers came out: one of them from our lab called the Fab@Home and the other called RepRap out of the United Kingdom. Both of these academic systems were open source and basically allowed anyonefor a budget of about US$1,000to make his or her own printer and start experimenting with new materials and new processes. The availability of these open-source printers really reduced the barrier of entry of people to start exploring this technology and develop new ideas like food printing and bioprinting.

IEEE Pulse: Describe the medical applications of 3-D printing.

Lipson: One of the biggest industries to be affected by 3-D printing is the medical instrumentation industry, particularly those segments that fabricate small runs of parts that are relatively

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complex. If you want to make toothbrushes, for example, mass production is the better solution because toothbrushes are fairly simple and are made in the millions. On the other hand, when youre making medical instruments, such as computed tomog-raphy and magnetic resonance imaging scanners, their parts are more complex and are produced in far smaller quantitiesand thats where 3-D printing technology has an advantage.

When you go from medical instrumentation to custom pros-thetics and implants, you basically have a batch size of one: You are making a unique implant just for one person, and that implant

can be very complex; it cannot be mass produced. Weve seen a great deal of growth in the area of using 3-D printing implants both out of engineering materials like metals and polymers and more recently also implants that are printed with live cells. This is what is known as bioprinting.

IEEE Pulse: How far along is bioprinting?Lipson: Theres a lot of potential in the ability to put different

types of live cells all simultaneously into a single live implant. But right now, were just at the beginning. At Cornell Univer-sity, my colleagues Jonathan Butcher and Larry Bonassar and

Q&A with Author, Engineer, and 3-D Printing

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students have been able to print things such as knee meniscus, a heart valve, spinal disks, and other types of cartilage or bone. None of these have vascularity and are on the low end of ana-tomical complexity.

As technology progresses, however, well see more and more complex heterogeneous tissues being fabricated, such as liver tissue, kidney tissue, and so forth. This ability opens the door to making increasingly viable live implants, as well as printing models for drug testing that bridge the gap between the petri dish and animal testing. It also opens the door to creating train-ing and surgical training and planning models for surgeons, which will likewise bridge the gap between training on stan-dard models and cadavers.

IEEE Pulse: What are some of the biggest biomedical applications for 3-D printing today?

Lipson: One of the most success-ful commercial cases for 3-D printing are Invisalign braces, which are familiar to many people. (Invisalign braces are a made-to-fit series of clear, removable, orthodontic aligners used to straighten a patients teeth.) These braces are 3-D printed, and they are unique to each person who uses them. There are about 50,000 braces printed each day. Chances are, somebody youll meet today is wear-ing one of these 3-D printed prosthetics and possibly not even aware of it. These braces are also a good example of a new business model that takes advantage of the fact that 3-D printers can make unique, complex parts in a batch size of one. It wouldnt be viable to do this in any other way, and, in this case, it is a big commercial success. Similar businesses are evolving around hearing aid casings, crowns, and foot prosthetics.

IEEE Pulse: When you first began working with 3-D printing, were you getting into the field because you just thought it was interesting technology or because of its potential applications?

Lipson: I definitely got into it as a user. I was designing robots. We kept designing crazy robotic blueprints that were very difficult to fabricate using conventional manufacturing. We got one of the early 3-D printers back in 1999 to try to fabricate our unconven-tional designs. One of our first robots was born, so to speak, using a 3-D printer in late 1999 and appeared on the front page of The New York Times under the headline Robots Making Robots. But we very quickly realized that 3-D printers were not good enough. For example, they could print the body of the robot, but not the wires, the batteries, or the microprocessorswhat makes a robot a robot. We started developing next-generation 3-D printers that could also print those other active components (Figure 1).

IEEE Pulse: What is your lab today doing that would intrigue IEEE Pulse readers?

Lipson: One offshoot of bioprinting is food printing, which opens (doors to) a lot of very interesting possibilities both for entertainment purposes, such as creating pastries and other

things that would require a pastry chef, and also from a nutri-tional point of view. That encompasses the ability to create foods with very controlled nutritional content that takes into account an individuals biometrics and medical needs. When we open-sourced our 3-D printer, thats what a lot of people wanted to do. For example, we printed cookies with different sugar contents based on biometrics [2].

Were also working hard at trying to embed the electronic circuits into a 3-D print. In other words, we hope to move 3-D printing from making passive plastic or metal parts to actually

working with multiple active materials, such as printing wires, actuators, and bat-teries. That would have great implications for medical instrumentation and devices.

IEEE Pulse: How far along is that work?

Lipson: Weve printed batteries, and weve printed motors, but it turns out that its very difficult to print the whole thing together, all working at once. We are almost there, but that last step of print-ing everything100%all at once, is trickier than we anticipated.

IEEE Pulse: What is your goal?Lipson: Our goal is to print a robot

that will walk out of the printer, batteries included!

IEEE Pulse: Do you think that 3-D printing is going to revolutionize medicine?

Lipson: Absolutely, I do think so. Personalized medicine is clearly on the

horizonwith the personal genomics, etc. Three-dimensional printing could play an important role in the physical aspect of personalization, ranging all the way from individualized nutri-tion to personalized prosthetic devices and medical implants and bioprinting, to surgical training, and even to printing custom medications that contain all of the medications a patient needs at exactly the right level. There are just so many avenues that this technology can affect and intersect medical treatment.

Three-dimensional printing is no longer just about printing a plastic shell for an MRI scanner. Its really about completely new ways of thinking about medicine and biomedical engineering. Im very optimistic.

Leslie Mertz ([email protected]) is a freelance science, medical, and technical writer, author, and educator living in northern Michigan.

References[1] H. Lipson and M. Kurman, Fabricated: The New World of 3D Print-

ing. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2013.

[2] J. Lipton and H. Lipson. (2013, May 31). Adventures in food printing:

3-D kitchen printers produce hits (a deep-fried scallop space shut-

tle) and misses (square milk), IEEE Spectrum [Online]. Available:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-elec tronics/gadgets/

adventures-in-printing-food

FIGURE 1 Hod Lipson is holding one of his robots, parts of which were 3-D printed. (Photo courtesy of Cornell University.)


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By Leslie Mertz

Dream It, Design It, Print It in 3-D

So maybe we are not all driving to work in a flying car or are being beamed up by a transporter yet, but we should

be clearing out a space in the lab and perhaps in the office for a replicator. Sure, they may not work the same as the replicators on Star Trek that instanta-neously pop out hot, full-course meals to suit any crew members whim, but they can generate three-dimensional (3-D) objects to match your computer design.

Welcome to the world of additive technol-ogy known as 3-D printing. It is available now, it is expanding to include a wide array of materials and complex printed objects, and the cost is drop-ping. This combination of factors is allowing more people, including those in the biomedical field, to turn on their imaginations and think about the enormous number of possibilities that could be afforded with a 3-D printer.

Base TechnologyThree-dimensional printers are somewhat analogous to the stan-dard paper printer. For the latter, the user creates a document

on his or her computer, sends it to the printer, and the printer deposits ink in patterns to match the doc-ument. Three-dimensional printers do the same thing, but the users document is exchanged for a design file, the ink is replaced with plastic or some other material, and instead of stopping at one layer, the printer adds as many addi-tional layers as needed to build a 3-D object.

Although all 3-D print-ers follow this general

methodology, specific technologies vary from one company to another, and sometimes within companies (see Performance and Price). An example is Stratasys Ltd., a leading manufacturer of 3-D printers, which has headquarters both in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Rehovot, Israel (Figure 1). Stratasys uses two primary technolo-

gies. The first is fused deposition modeling, in which thermo-plastic material is heated and extruded as a 3-D bead, according to Fred Fischer, materials and applications product director of Stratasys. Were precisely controlling the deposition and the location of that deposition to create the shape of the layer. Then, we repeat that process over and over and over again. Since the material is heated as its extruded, it fuses or bonds to the lay-ers below, he noted. Since the 3-D printed part is built with the same thermoplastics that are used in injection molding or

What Can 3-D Printing Do for You?



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machining, it has very similar durability, mechanical properties, and stability of the part over time.

The second technology used by Stratasys is called PolyJet. PolyJet jets out droplets of a photopolymer, meaning that its a liquid material that solidifies under ultraviolet light. PolyJet basically prints the shape of each layer and hits that layer with ultraviolet light to solidify it. Then, it repeats the process over and over again, Fischer said.

PolyJet builds in minute layers and therefore allows ultrafine detail and finishes, while also providing what Fischer described as fast throughput. Fast in 3-D printing means several hours. If youre an engineer, there are generally two times you start a model: either in the morning to have it by the end of the day, or at night before you go home so its done the next morning when you come into the office, he said.

Many 3-D printed items are the brainchild of the user who creates the design file. Sometimes, the application calls for a reproduction of something that already exists. In these cases, 3-D scanners are available to handle that aspect of the job. One such scanner is a portable laser-line scanning measurement device produced by FARO, which has its global headquarters in Lake Mary, Florida. The FARO Edge ScanArm can be used in bio-medical applications in a variety of forms, said Dan Alred, FARO product marketing manager (Figure 2). One frequent application involves using the scanner to capture an existing bone or joint and employ the design file generated by that scan to optimize the form and fit of prosthetics, he explained. Examples of this could include full or partial hip replacements, or even matching a prosthetic arm or hand to a patients remaining arm or hand.

Beyond prosthetics, Alred said researchers are also using the ScanArm for purposes such as measuring the seating posture of individuals who spend long periods of time in a wheelchair, with a goal of improving the fit and eliminating pain and discomfort, and to estimate the in vivo forces in the knee joint as a way of understanding ways to treat and prevent joint diseases.

Biomedical ApplicationsSince the inception of 3-D printing about 25 years ago, its primary use has been prototypes. In these cases, a designer or engineer creates a component with computer-aided design

Performance and PricePeople ask me, Where is the industry going in the future? Should I get in now; should I wait? said Fred Fischer, the materials and applications product director of 3-D printer manufacturer Stratasys. The market is moving in two different directions. At the most simplistically defined, one is about price and the other is about performance. It all depends on what the 3-D printer is expected to do.

Three-dimensional printers come in three general categories: Big production models are mainly for companies and labs

that produce a high number of concept models, precision prototypes, patterns or molds for tooling, or unique end products sold on the commercial market. With our 3-D Production Series system, the user can control virtually all of the parameters in how the part is built, so as a result they have the capability to further optimize the output for their application, said Fischer. Using the two-dimensional printing industry as an analogy, these are like the production presses you might see in a newspaper production facility, where its all about throughput and the manufacturing of the end product itself. Production Series 3-D printers are about the size of a refrigerator or two refrigerators stacked side to side and can cost anywhere from US$70,000 to more than US$400,000, he said.

Medium-sized models are suited for work groups, a dozen or two dozen engineers and designers that share the 3-D printer and generally use it to refine and produce working and durable prototypes for testing. The work-group systems, which Stratasys calls its design series, are approximately the size of a large dormitory refrigerator and range in price from about US$25,000 to US$90,000.

Depending on the model, professional desktop 3-D printers range from about US$10,000 to US$30,000. Professional desktop models make it really affordable for an engineer to create iterations of their designs conveniently, confidentially, and quickly, Fischer said. Those are the easiest to use. Theyre intended so that you just bring your digital file in, hit print, print it on the system, and then engage with the part. One of the Stratasys models, called the Mojo, is about the size of a wheeled beach cooler.

At the desktop end of the market, price is important. These (printers) will continue to maintain performance capabilities, but the price point will drop, similar to what has been seen in countless other technology industries before this one, Fischer said. The technology has gone from approximately US$100,000 to US$10,000 over the first 25 years, and I suspect in the next two and a half years, youll see it go from US$10,000 to certainly less than US$5,000 and probably well below that in terms of professional desktop printing.

At the other end of the spectrum, performance reigns. Fischer continued, With production 3-D printers, the questions are: How do additive technologies close the gap between them and traditional technologies? And more specifically for the plastics world, how do we advance additive technologies so the cost of the part, the aesthetics of the output, and the mechanical properties of the output are closer to injection molding or to some of those other traditional technologies?

He added, Performance and price: those are the two directions the market is moving in, and theyre intentionally opposite directions.FIGURE 1 An engineer removes a newly fabricated part from one

of the Stratasys 3-D printers, in this case, a Mojo desktop 3-D printer. (Photo courtesy of Stratasys.)


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(CAD) software and prints it in 3-D to test form, fit, and function before he proceeds to production tooling. The whole idea is that 3-D printers allow designers and engineers to make changes much, much earlier in the design cycle and as a result dramatically reduce the time and the cost to make those fixes, Fischer said.

However, the applications for 3-D printing are rapidly widening. The fastest-growing areas today for additive or 3-D technology are in the manufacturing space, Fischer said. As the performance of these systems has improved, manufacturers have discovered that theres some merit to making their com-ponents with additive technology instead of subtractive (e.g., carving from a larger piece of material) or some of the other more tradi-tional technologies on the marketplace.

This is especially true for companies that have low production volumes and parts or products that are either highly complex or that require frequent modifications.

One of the factors that makes additive technology a good alternative is where the product value is high, meaning that its not a commodity, but its an oddity. The medical device and certainly the medical implant industries are perfect examples of that, Fischer said. He described made-to-order jigs and fixtures built for specific oper-ating rooms as well as custom knee or hip implants and specially designed tools to help orthopedic surgeons during exacting operations. In those cases, the volume of each of those parts may be just one, and those custom-made fixtures, tools, and implants then have many positive implications in terms of the

time needed for the surgery, the recovery time of the patient, and the success of the surgery and the implant.

Combining Art and ScienceA major product application for 3-D print-ing today is in prosthetics. Our original goal was not to use 3-D printing necessarily. It was to solve a problem, said Scott Summit, director of technology for San Francisco-based Bespoke Innovations, a start-up com-pany founded in 2009, and as of May 2012, a division of the major 3-D printer manufac-turer 3-D Systems of Rock Hill, North Caro-lina. Bespoke does not build the prosthetics themselves but designs and produces panels, or fairings, that cover leg prosthetics.

The fairings, which lie at the intersec-tion of art and science, started with a simple idea. Six years ago, I was teaching indus-trial design at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and I was doing research on the side into prosthetic limbs, Summit said. Prosthetic limbs have traditionally been the domain of orthopedic surgeons, pros-

thetists, and other very specialized professions, but not indus-trial designers at all, so I was curious about what an industrial designer could bring to the table, he said.

It turned out that an industrial designer did have something to offer. The main thing I found was that a prosthetic limb is designed entirely with biomechanical constraints in mind, Summit said. So my thinking was that modern prosthetics are pretty incredible and weve all heard these miracle stories about what a modern prosthetic doesbut they only meet one

FIGURE 2 FAROs Edge ScanArm is a portable laser-line scanning measurement device used to scan an existing structure, including a bone or joint, and help generate a design file for use by a 3-D printer. (Photo courtesy of FARO.)

FIGURE 3 The Bespoke Fairing uses the mirrored geometry from a scan of the persons surviving leg to create a nearly exact replica of the original

shape. The fairing, however, is not intended to fool the eye into overlooking the prosthetic limb. Instead, it intends to turn the prosthetic limb into something worthy of attention and

admiration, more like a watch than a biomechanical device. (Photo courtesy

of Bespoke Innovations.)


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facet of a human. They dont address the psychological or emo-tional needs, the entirety of a person.

From that realization, Summit worked with orthopedic sur-geon Kenneth Trauner to found Bespoke Innovations and get into the prosthetics business. The process for making a prosthetic fair-ing begins with image-based 3-D scanning technology to capture images of both the prosthetic leg and the sound leg. Next, a 3-D computer model mirrors the sound leg and superimposes it over the prosthetic. This provides contralateral symmetry. (If the patient is missing both legs, a stand-in is used to approximate the shape and size of the patients natural legs.)

Once the mechanical fairing model is completed, the user and Bespoke designers begin the creative part. They work with the client to sift through dozens of patterns and the broad range of materials that are now available for 3-D printing, including metal and poly-mers. Bespoke designers are also ready, willing, and able to make modifications and create one-of-a-kind, flexible, durable, and light-weight fairings that match the users personality and how she or

he wishes to be perceived by the outside world. Some fairings are sleek and metal-plated, some are rich leather fabrications, some are intricately carved polymers, and others are decorated with striking graphics or tattoos (Figures 3 and 4). Each is economically feasible because of 3-D printingthey cost about US$4,000US$6,000.

The whole idea is not to create a fairing that looks like a human limb but rather to create one to complement the custom-ers style and creativity. It is more a piece of jewelry or artwork that is designed to be looked at, Summit said. Customers tell him that the fairings break down barriers. Where people would previously glance and then quickly look away from an amputee, they are now engaging in conversation about the cool-looking fairing. Its very emotionally and psychologically uplifting on both sides, he said.

Bespoke is now expanding into all kinds of exoskeleton oppor-tunities where we are pursuing needs of many types and where the product created is worn outside of the body to address any one of a number of challenges that can happen inside the body, Summit said. One of the companys targeted areas is carpal tun-nel syndrome, a nerve problem that can cause pain and weakness in the hand, wrist, and elbow. Currently, the reason that people often have continued trouble with carpal tunnel is that they dont wear the brace, because they hate the brace: it looks horrible, its uncomfortable, you cant sleep in it, it accumulates grimeits just unappealing on many levels, he said. And because they dont wear it, their carpal tunnel persists, and ultimately, very often they need surgery. All of those issues can be addressed through good design and a 3-D printer, Summit asserted (Figure 5).

Bespoke will be releasing new medical and body applications by the end of 2013, including a 3-D printed device for people who have hand arthritis or carpal tunnel syndrome, Summit said, but details would not be available until closer to the release date. For now, the company is receiving ample attention for its fairings. He remarked, They really demonstrate the versatility of 3-D print-ing and all it can do to improve the quality of somebodys life who has a very special, unique predicament.

Liquid Metal to Form StructuresCurrent research projects showcase just how far 3-D print-ing has come and how far it has yet to go as printing materials have moved from wax to plastics and more. One is the newly announced development of liquid metals that can hold their shape and show promise for use as conductive wires and other structures that can be printed into 3-D printed devices [1]. These devices could come out of the printer complete and ready to function, marking a major advancement for 3-D printing.

A North Carolina State University research group has already shown that liquid metal can form stackable beads and flexible wires [2]. It is still in an early stage, but the work has drawn considerable interest from the media, from other engineers, and from at least one 3-D printing company.

Weve been working on this for about four years now, and there were a couple of things that motivated us when we started, said Michael Dickey, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. One of them was patterning liquids. If you take two raindrops and touch them together, they just form a bigger rain-drop. The metal that we work with is almost exactly like water in

FIGURE 4 The Bespoke Fairing captures the wearers personality in the product. In this case, the client chose a look which would complement his lifestyle. The result suggests a hybrid of the cli-ents body, as well as his motorcycle. (Photo courtesy of Bespoke Innovations.)

FIGURE 5 The Bespoke Wrist Brace addresses the need for patient compliance by offering a brace that fits the body, allows the skin to breathe, and looks like anything but a medical product. Three-dimensional scanning allows the users unique shape to drive the contours of their brace, while the flexibility of 3-D printing invites their taste preferences to inform the products look and feel. (Photo courtesy of Bespoke Innovations.)


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terms of its viscosity, so the challenge of patterning this material was interesting.

The second motivation was to make connectionsakin to wire bondsbetween electronic components. We knew from our previous experience that you could inject liquid metal into micro-fluidic channels to make things like wires. Weve done that for a while, Dickey said. The problem, however, is that you end up with structures that are two dimensional. In other words, theyre in plane. We needed to do them out of plane, which is important for making more complex structures with 3-D printing.

To begin, they had to find the right material, and Dickey and his lab settled on a liquid metal alloy of gallium and indium.

The alloy reacts with the oxygen in ambient room-temperature air to form an external skin. That skin allows the liquid metal to retain its structure. Two droplets dont coalesce into one. Rather, the droplets can be made to connect to one another, while retaining their own droplet shapes (Figure 6). The metal spontaneously forms a thin oxide skin, and its strong enough to hold these shapes that were patterning together, Dickey said. Were just taking advantage of the properties of the material.

The resulting structure is similar to a water balloon in that its solid on the outside but liquid on the inside. One big differ-ence between the two is that if you puncture a water balloon, the water is going to leak out of course, but if you puncture a bead

Undergrad Turns Junk Parts into New 3-D Printing TechnologyIt is the age-old story:

An undergrad meets a professor. The professor gives the undergrad lab space to look into the

possibility of a new and interesting technology. The undergrad has a lab accident that

proves the technology is possible. The undergrad builds equipment for the

technology out of spare parts from his apartment.

The undergrad is the first author on a research paper that receives worldwide attention.

Okay, it may not be the typical research tale, but it is what happened in the case of North Carolina State Universitys Prof. Michael Dickey, Ph.D., and undergraduate student Collin Ladd (Figures S1 and S2).

It all began when Ladd approached Dickey with some ideas about making ink-jet printable circuit boards (to print a circuit on paper for disposable electronics). Ladd recalled the conversation: He said, Well, you know what? I dont know if thats possible. Would you like to try it? Thats how it started.

Soon, Dickey suggested Ladd work on patterning liquid metals, especially extruding liquid metals into fine, tiny, conductive wires. We knew it could work, because one day I was trying to get liquid metal into a really small, 10-L syringe, Ladd said. I had no idea the syringe was clogged, so Im pushing on the syringe as hard as I can, and it explodes and wire shoots out.

From there, Ladd began developing a slightly more sophisticated process: a syringe pump equipped with a nozzle to extrude liquid metal wire. For that, he scavenged some parts from his room. Im a spare-electronics hoarder. I take everybodys broken printers or whatever, break them down into the useful parts, and then just box them, he said. So when I started working on the liquid-metal setup, I ended up building the first prototype for the syringe pump out of printer gears, a stepper motor, a skateboard bearing, a bolt, and an old laser pointer.

As luck would have it, the first time Ladd tried it out, a wire instantly formed. Dr. Dickey was

really excited about that, Ladd said. Eventually, the process switched over to a tapered glass micropipette that does not clog as easily, and finally a pneumatic system that eliminates manual control of a syringe. Short bursts of pneumatic pressure make droplets, and

steady pressure yields wire.Ladd also built a force meter to measure the

physical properties of the oxide skin that forms on the liquid metal. He described it: I just used this cantilever, kind of calibrated it with droplets that I weighed later, and then I went ahead and extruded the wire and watched the displacement of the needle. Then, I took the displacement of the needle and correlated it with the smallest radius of the wire, which would be the first to give under tension, and actually verified the critical surface stress of the skin that we found with a rheometer.

Ladd ultimately earned his bachelor of science degree in chemistry in 2012, and the research on liquid metal made news far and wide earlier this year when the scientific paper was published. Although his work in Dickeys lab led to a good

research job, Ladd has decided to head to medical school. I have this horrible problem of having a lot of interests, including electronics, engineering, and chemistry, so Im thinking that once I get my M.D., I might just come full circle and work on something like prosthetics and tie it all together.

Dickey is proud of and still rather amazed at Ladds contributions to the liquid-metal project. Sure, if you know what youre doing, the machine that does the printing is fairly simple in hindsight, but starting from scratch, its not obvious how to do it. And Collin did that. He figured out how to make wires and suspend droplets and get it all to function. Its remarkable, Dickey said.

Dickey has a credo to never give undergraduate students mundane tasks, and it worked like a charm this time around. Every once in a while, youll run into students like Collin who are really great, who are creative, and who arent afraid to try things...sometimes because they dont know any better, he said with a laugh. In this case, I really didnt know if this was going to work, and thats how a lot of research is, but he made it work.

FIGURE S1 North Carolina State University Prof. Michael Dickey likes to challenge his under-graduate students. (Photo courtesy of Michael Dickey.)

FIGURE S2 Using spare parts, including a skateboard bear-ing and an old laser pointer, Collin Ladd built his labs first prototype for the liquid-metal syringe pump. (Image courtesy of Michael Dickey.)


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of liquid metal, the skin reforms, Dickey described. The other obvious difference is its a metal, so it has a lot of interesting prop-erties, such as electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and optical reflectivity. Between those properties and the way it flows because its a liquid, we figured out that there were a number of cool and interesting things that we could do with it.

One was to make wires (see Undergrad Turns Junk Parts into New 3-D Printing Technology), which could be embedded into 3-D material, whether a polymer, ceramic, or some other material (Figure 7). To illustrate the flexibility and conductive properties of the liquid metal wire, Dickey and his lab embedded the wire in a rubber-like material and then stretched it from one light-emitting diode to another to switch on the light. Its perhaps a little hokey, but it does demonstrate the idea, he said.

Dickey hopes that engineers and researchers will see new pos-sibilities for their own work. For me, the most obvious is printing conductors, interconnects, and things like that, and being able to do it at room temperature. And beyond that, since the final struc-ture you print is potentially deformable and flexible, you can start to think about printing a structure and then embedding it in a polymer to make a stretchable wire or stretchable antenna. He added, Because metals have so many nice properties, you can kind of let your imagination run wild.

Three-Dimensional Printed MicrobatteriesAnother item that could advance 3-D printing in the biomedical industry and across the board is a printable microbattery, which could be used to power even the smallest of implanted medical devices. That work is well under way in the lab of Jennifer Lewis, S.D., Hansjrg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at the Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sci-ences in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her research group at Harvard and her previous lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have worked for about a decade on creating 3-D printable, functional materials.

We want to print both form plus function, so were interested in embed-ding things like 3-D integrated elec-tronics into plastics, Lewis said. And batteries themselves are also critically enabling for those kinds of devices where you may just want to trans-mit wireless signals and know where theyre located in space; or you may

want to have autonomous sensing capability using really low-cost sensors and distributed networks that can just transmit a signal back. These types of uses do not require much power. You only need power when you want to actually transmit a signal, and at the same time, you may need a very small, very low-mass battery because your entire sensor might be on the order of a millimeter in size.

Although necessary to produce all-integrated devices, a battery of that size scale simply was not commercially available. With a request from the research group of Shen Dillon, UIUC assistant professor of materials science and engineering, Lewis collaborated with Dillon to build one. The result is a lithium-ion rechargeable battery that is about the size of a grain of sand [3]. They opted to make a rechargeable battery because the small size precludes them from having a large energy density (Figure 8).

We developed this class of materials called printable electrode inks for 3-D printing the anode and cathode, Lewis said, describing her labs contribution to the project. The inks for the anode and cath-ode are made with nanoparticles of different lithium metal oxide compounds. We also custom-designed a 3-D printing platform in my laboratory thats very high precision, and that has customized print heads to handle this variety of inks. The print head nozzles are smaller than a human hair in diameter. The final battery includes layers of anodes and cathodes, all tightly stacked with a separator into a tiny electrolyte-filled container (Figure 9).

She readily admits that the task was not simple. The inter-digitated battery design we used is well known,

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