Biomechanics
This three-letter knee ligament, frequently torn in sports, connects the femur to the tibia and stabilizes the joint.
What is the ACL?
In biomaterials, this term describes a synthetic material’s ability to exist safely inside the body without triggering a toxic, harmful, or severe immune rejection.
What is biocompatibility (or biocompatible)?
This non-invasive test uses electrodes placed on the skin to detect and graph the electrical signals generated by each heartbeat.
What is an ECG/EKG/Electrocardiogram?
To mimic normal human body temperature, mammalian cells in an incubator are standardly kept at this exact temperature in Celsius.
What is 37°C?
The Coulter Department is unique nationwide because it operates as a joint partnership between Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering and the medical school of this neighboring Atlanta university.
What is Emory University?
When your bicep flexes to lift a weight, your forearm and elbow act as a biological example of this simple machine.
What is a lever?
Commonly used in hip replacements, dental screws, and aerospace engineering, this lightweight metal is famous for integrating directly into bone without being rejected.
What is Titanium?
Implanted beneath the skin near the collarbone, this electronic device sends timed electrical impulses to prevent the heart from beating too slowly.
What is a pacemaker?
Before putting hands, bottles, or tools into a sterile hood, researchers routinely spray everything down with this specific percentage of ethanol.
What is 70%?
This building serves as the undergraduate home base for Coulter BME advising, study lounges, and design spaces.
What is the Whitaker Building (or U.A. Whitaker)?
In mechanical engineering and physiology, mechanical stress is calculated as applied force divided by this geometric measurement.
What is area (or cross-sectional area)?
Soft contact lenses are made from this squishy class of polymer networks that can absorb massive amounts of water without dissolving.
What are hydrogels?
Commonly clipped onto a patient's fingertip, this device shines red and infrared light through tissue to measure blood oxygen saturation.
What is a pulse oximeter?
standard PCR cycle repeats three thermal steps in order: Denaturation, followed by this cooler step where short primers bind to single-stranded DNA, and finally Extension.
What is Annealing?
Heavily affiliated with Coulter BME, this famous GT drug-delivery lab pioneered the invention of dissolvable microneedle patches to administer vaccines painlessly without hypodermic needles.
Who is Dr. Mark Prausnitz (or the Prausnitz Lab)?
On a standard stress-strain curve, the slope of the initial straight line defines this property, which measures how stiff a material is.
What is Young’s Modulus (or Elastic Modulus)?
Along with metals and polymers, this third classic material class is known for being hard, heat-resistant, and brittle; making it ideal for dental crowns and artificial bone.
What are ceramics?
While an ECG records the electrical rhythm of the heart, this non-invasive test uses a cap of scalp electrodes to track and record electrical brainwaves.
What is an EEG/Electroencephalogram?
Taken from a patient in 1951 without her consent, these human cervical cancer cells became the first immortalized human cell line ever grown in culture.
What are HeLa cells?
A leading faculty mentor in immunoengineering and microvascular remodeling, this BME professor's lab focuses on lipid signaling and cellular therapies for sickle cell disease. (Also, one of the instructors for BMED 2110!)
Who is Dr. Edward Botchwey?
This rule explains why weightlifting strengthens bones, while astronauts lose bone density in zero gravity because their skeleton isn't under mechanical load.
What is Wolff's Law?
This triple-helix structural protein is the most abundant protein in the human body, widely extracted and used as a natural scaffold material in tissue engineering.
What is collagen?
To measure blood flow velocity in real-time, specialized ultrasound leverages this physical principle, where the sound wave's frequency shifts as red blood cells move toward or away from the probe.
What is the Doppler Effect (or Doppler Ultrasound)
In molecular cloning, plasmids often carry a gene encoding this enzyme, which allows transformed bacteria to survive on ampicillin plates by breaking down the antibiotic's core ring structure.
What is beta-lactamase?
Serving as the Executive Director of the Petit Institute (IBB), this professor’s lab is internationally recognized for designing synthetic hydrogels and cell-adhesive biomaterials for regenerative medicine.
Who is Dr. Andrés García?