Research
The Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB) acts as an incubator for a variety of research activities and was built to tackle complex medical research problems using an interdisciplinary approach.
IBB's research builds on the functional academic disciplines represented by the participating schools at Georgia Tech and focuses on both core areas of science and engineering, as well as selected healthcare applications.
Specific diseases that are being impacted by the research conducted in IBB include heart disease, diabetes, cancer, infectious diseases, and neural injury, to name a few.
A biomaterial is any material, natural or man-made, that is made compatible with living tissues and performs, aids, or replaces a natural function and is used and adapted for a medical application. Biomaterials may have a benign function, such as being used for a heart valve, or may be bioactive with a more interactive functionality such as scaffolds for cell delivery and engraftment and a delivery vehicle for controlled delivery of biotherapeutics.
The definition of a biomaterial Read More>>
Cancer is a disease in which a group of cells display uncontrolled growth through division beyond normal limits. It is an invasion that intrudes upon and destroys adjacent tissues, and sometimes metastasis, in which cancer cells spread to other locations in the body. Symptoms and treatment of cancer depend on the type and location of the tumor.
IBB is home to several research labs that focus on various elements of cancer biology research. Interests include basic studies in Read More>>
Pharmaceuticals save lives, alleviate suffering, and are highly cost effective compared to other treatments. In IBB, researchers seek to further improve pharmaceuticals through research on drug design, drug development and drug delivery.
Our research on drug design emphasizes making new drugs to treat cancer, AIDS, bacterial infections, and other diseases. These new drugs are synthesized at Georgia Tech and are being tested for optimal activity. Drug development involves novel Read More>>
Molecular evolution is the process of evolution at the scale at the DNA, RNA, and proteins level. As a field, molecular evolution emerged in the 1960s as researchers sought to understand discoveries surrounding the evolutionary patterns, structure and function of nucleic acids and protein as well as the use of these molecules in studies of phylogenetics, population genetics, biogeography, and other areas of research and at different levels of biological organization.
Biomechanics is the application of mechanical principles to biological systems in order to better understand the physical properties in cells and other systems. Biomechanics emerged from the bioengineering field and uses traditional engineering principles to analyze complex biological systems.
Biomechanical phenomena affect nearly every aspect of cellular biology and function, yet the underlying mechanisms of how mechanical forces and biochemical signals interact is not Read More>>
NeuroEngineering faculty at Georgia Tech work at the intersection of technology and neuroscience. It combines wet-lab biomaterials, neurobiology, biomechanics and motor control, motor control, neural interfacing electronics, optical neuroimaging, modeling, and multi-dimensional data analysis. The goal is to advance the understanding of fundamental neural processes such as neural repair and regeneration, sensory-motor integration, hybrid (living + artificial) neural systems and computational Read More>>
The promise of regenerative medicine is truly remarkable. Over the last two decades, significant breakthroughs in understanding within the regenerative medicine and tissue engineering fields have yielded a more intimate understanding of the functioning of human tissue.
In the future, new technologies may deliver islet cells for diabetes, neural regeneration for spinal cord injuries and more substantial heart repair. In addition, as biology, bioengineering and medicine continue to Read More>>
Stem cells hold tremendous promise as a biological resource for regenerative medicine therapies, pharmaceutical discovery and development, and cell-based diagnostic assays. However, transforming the potential of stem cells into viable biomedical technologies and commercial applications depends upon the development of efficient, robust, non-destructive and scalable strategies to control, assay and manufacture stem cells and stem cell-derived products.
By developing controlled systems Read More>>
Systems biology is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on complex interactions in biological systems in order to improve the design of molecular and cell-based technologies. Instead of studying one biological component at a time, scientists use systems biology approaches to obtain, integrate and analyze complex data from multiple experimental sources to understand how molecules act together within the network of interaction that makes up life.
IBB investigators are using Read More>>
