Dear Reader,

Boston University’s Graduate BioMedical Engineering (BME) department is ranked #8 by US News and World Report.¹ In 2010-2011, BME’s 33 primary faculty members attracted $24.3 million in external research funding. Many BME faculty collaborate with clinicians and medical researchers at the BU School of Medicine.

As an endorsement of this, BME was one of the original ten universities to receive a five-year Coulter Foundation grant to translate biomedical engineering research to products and services that can benefit patients.² About $3.6 million in grant funding has been distributed to BME researchers over the past five years to advance their research towards commercialization.

Amongst these BME researchers is the 2010 BU Innovator of the Year Award recipient, Professor Mark Grinstaff³ who has a number of projects that have been Coulter funded, including two that are now being commercialized by a startup companies: Flex Biomedical and AcuityBio. Founded in 2007, Flex has raised $2.2 million in angel and SBIR funding. Acuity Bio recently received $1.4 million in SBIR funding.⁴

The medical device industry in Massachusetts is one of the preeminent industries in the region and certainly is in the top five globally.⁵ There are over 250 medical device companies in Massachusetts shipping over $4 billion in products. BME has strong connections to the Massachusetts medical device industry with many of our students going to work in these companies and with active research collaborations.

Sincerely,

Vinit Nijhawan, OTD Managing Director

1. Best Biomedical and Bioengineering Schools, U.S. News.
2. Coulter Foundation website.
3. Mark Grinstaff receives BU’s First Innovator of the Year Award, Office of Technology Development, Boston University.
4. AcuityBio, Inc. has been awarded a $1.4M Phase II SBIR grant, Office of Technology Development, Boston University.
5. The Medical Device Industry in Massachusetts, Clayton-Matthews, Alan, UMass Boston.