The Rice bioengineering department helped host the annual meeting of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, where two Rice faculty were inducted as Fellows and Michael King stepped in as president.

Key highlights from the attached story:

1. While traditional kits confirmed infections, genomic sequencing was essential to investigate the outbreak's origin, especially as patients simultaneously battled malaria.

2. Without advanced diagnostics, misdiagnosis rates for fever can exceed 30%, leading to the overuse of broad-spectrum antibiotics and accelerating antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

3. Experts like Dr. Atsbeha Weldemariam of the Ethiopian Public Health Institute are advocating for a shift toward automated DNA sequencing technology that can isolate pathogens in under 20 minutes.

4. As Prof. Claude Mambo Muvunyi, Director General of the Rwanda Biomedical Centre, notes: “Precision diagnostics are increasingly cost-effective when evaluated through a population health lens”.

5. Tools like BGI Genomics’ PMseq™ can now analyze more than 36,000 pathogens in a single sample without prior culture.

An ageing population is often accompanied by an increase in age‑related disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, an incurable neurodegenerative disorder that impairs body movement and which is mainly alleviated by medicines or surgical procedures. A research team at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has developed the next‑generation “All‑Acoustics Brain‑Computer Interface (BCI) System”, leveraging “transcranial ultrasound neuromodulation” to deliver fully non‑invasive, deep‑brain and high‑precision neural modulation with ultrasound. The system presents a promising new therapeutic approach for treating Parkinson’s disease, as well as other neurological and psychiatric disorders. The team has begun clinical research in collaboration with Huashan Hospital in Shanghai and Zhujiang Hospital of Southern Medical University.

Professor Kunio Shirahada’s research at the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology explores how services can improve people’s quality of life as well as their harmony with the environment. Inspired by Japan’s “satoyama” landscapes, where human life and nature intertwine, he has developed a framework that treats nature as a partner in value creation to enable services that focus on long-term societal impact to promote psychological, social, and ecological well-being along with economic value.

Wildlife pathologist Dr. Karen Terio works to understand, diagnose, treat and prevent disease in a host of animals, from dolphins to turtles, to chimpanzees and cheetahs.

A University of Colorado Denver lab is developing a lung model to help advance the treatment of lung diseases which affect men and women differently.  The artificial lung is made by combining donor cells and tissues with synthetic materials. The result behaves like a real lung—soft when healthy, stiff when sickly—allowing researchers to study diseases like pulmonary fibrosis and cancer more accurately. The biomedical engineering lab is also working with a California-based company to test pharmaceuticals aimed at treating or eliminating lung diseases, which sees the benefit of using the new model. 

New study aims to understand how policy changes, such as new zoning laws and broader housing market forces influence the availability and creation of homes, particularly affordable homes.