Training Program

Blended curriculum

The blended curriculum is more like the curricula at most institutions with a mixed set of courses in biological and math/engineering sciences dispersed throughout the first two years. The advantage is that the courses in biological sciences are offered with more depth, and emphasis on either molecular/cellular neurosciences versus systems and physiological neurosciences, can be more flexible. The students may also gain lecture and laboratory experience that is relevant to research (although clinical and pathophysiological exposure will not be as great as in the medical school courses). The core biological course in this program will be Graduate Neuroscience, a year-long survey course covering all aspects of neurscience research. The students also stay current with math and engineering courses throughout the two years. Again, students may be able to flexibly emphasize math sciences versus engineering sciences, in preparation for, say, computational neuroscience versus instrumentation research.

In either of these approaches, the curriculum committee will ascertain that a balance between biological sciences and engineering sciences is maintained, the coursework involves adequate levels of mathematics and computing and, importantly, depth is achieved in graduate level courses in some engineering sub-specialization.

Besides acceptance by the curriculum committee and oversight by the Junior progress committee, the students will need to pass an institutionally mandated Graduate Board oral examination conducted by 5 faculty, of whom no more than 2 are from the home Department of the student. The oral examination is typically completed by the early to the middle part of the third year (while the student has already started full time research).

Some of the courses that are offered in the Biomedical Engineering Department include Neuroengineering, Ion Channels, Physiological Foundations, Biomechanics and Motor Control, Models of Physiological Processes in the Neuron, Principles of the Design of Biomedical Instrumentation, Structure and Function of the Auditory and Vestibular Systems and Theoretical Neuroscience. A couple of new courses have been proposed by our new faculty : Neuronal Network Dynamics and Learning and Introduction to Neural Computation. Depending on the student's interest there are several course offerings in the School of Engineering, School of Medicine and School of Arts and Sciences that can be taken.

The Neuroscience department offers the following graduate level courses that are relevant to this program: Graduate Neuroscience, Information Processing in the Nervous System, Molecular Mechanisms in Synaptic Transmission, Neuropharmacology, Primate Visual System, Molecular Mechanisms of Cell Death: Necrosis to Apoptosis, The Cellular and Molecular Basis of Neural Development and Introduction to Bioinformatics.

Students can also take several courses offered by the Engineering School. Some of the relevant courses are: Digital Signal Processing, Medical Imaging Systems, Image Processing and Analysis, Introduction to Nonlinear Systems, Introduction to Information Theory and Coding, Analog and Digital VLSI Design, Neuromorphic Systems, and Microsystems Laboratory.

The first year courses offered in the School of Medicine are Human Anatomy, Organ Systems, Immunology, Developmental Biology, Molecules and Cells, Neuroscience.

A new course on "Clinical Neuroengineering" is planned to take advantage of the unique opportunity at JHU to involve distinguished and highly productive clinical faculty. This extensive and unusual group of clinical faculty fron Neurology, Neurosurgery and other departments carry out considerable peer reviewed research and actively participate in their collaboration with the BME faculty. These clinical faculty will participate in a course to be run by Dr. Thakor. The course will cover topics on various neurological mechanisms, physiology and pathophysiology and clinical problems. In conjunction with that, the clinical faculty along with the BME faculty will present technological approaches and solutions. This course will clearly emphasize the issue of diagnosis and therapy through engineering approaches. One excellent example is derived from Dr. Thakor's collaboration with Drs. Hanley and Geocadin to use quantitative signal processing approaches to characterize brain injury and to develop diagnostic techniques for brain monitoring in intensive care. Another example is Dr. Shadmehr's collaboration with Dr. Lenz to study neuronal firing in Parkinson's patients undergoing surgery. Teaching will involve not only fundamentals of brain function and diseases, but novel engineering principles and approaches, and learning through case studies of advanced research projects by our collaborating faculty.

Research Focus

The graduate students will initiate their research training in two parts. During the first 12 to 18 months, the students will do research rotations. These are encouraged to be done in up to three laboratories. We will encourage the students to do their rotations in the basic, clinical and engineering laboratories. During the first year, the students will take a "Topics" course, with weekly meeting and presentations, listening to presentations by the participating research faculty. The Neuroengineering students participate in the seminars and tutorials given by the clinical faculty as well as the basic science faculty (from BME and engineering). This will improve their awareness of the clinical problems and research issues that may motivate their basic science research. The students in the Neuroengineering program doing research rotations will follow up by

• Writing a "paper" pertaining to the literature review and the preliminary work done during their research rotation, typically in year 2. This will insure training in writing papers and bring some accountability to the research rotation.
• Submitting a research proposal, patterned after an NIH research grant, typically in year 3 (this is not their thesis proposal). This will provide a preliminary training in writing a thesis proposal, and it may provide experience in participating in the writing of a real research proposal being prepared by the mentor.

The students will make a formal oral presentation, some time during the first two years. There will be at least two formal opportunities:

• Annual retreat of the Ph.D. students, during which students discuss research, do presentations, receive training in ethics, and gain exposure to faculty's research.
• Presentation to the advisory board, which consists of senior scientists, industry leaders, or academic leaders.

Program Flow

The following flowchart depicts the program flow as seen by the student (left boxes) and as seen by the faculty (right boxes). Year by year evolution of the student responsibilities and the faculty responsibilities (and committees) are listed. The faculty responsibility mirrors that of the student, from the admission process until graduation.

Last modified: 01/3/08, 16:01