Members of BME maintained a strong record of research funding throughout All 10 of the active staff with

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1 RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS: PUBLICATIONS Department members remained very productive throughout 2012; the 10 active members of the Department authored more than 150 refereed publications and conference presentations. The full list of the Department s publications for 2012 is available at: GRANTS Members of BME maintained a strong record of research funding throughout All 10 of the active staff with appointments in the Department held NSERC Discovery grants, 5 were also PIs on CIHR research grants, and 3 held extremely competitive CHRP grants supporting interdisciplinary research. Table 1 summarizes the major research grants awarded to the Department s members in Table 1: Major awards to BME Staff in 2012 Name Agency & Title Role Amount Term COLLINS FRSQ Pfizer Innovation Grant: Entre le laboratoire et le PI 595, chevet : Validation de bio marqueurs optimisés par résonance magnétique pour le diagnostic clinique précoce et le prognostic dans la maladie d'alzheimer COLLINS NSERC Collaborative Research and Training Experience: CO PI 1,650, NSERC CREATE Program in Medical Image Analysis JUNKER Canadian Foundation for Innovation: Tools for Co PI $11,300,371 Nanoscience and Technology upgrade ('Nanotools 2') JUNKER Grand Challenges Canada: PI 113, Yarn based low cost rapid diagnostic test for leishmaniasis PIKE NSERC Discovery Grant: MRI Acquisition and Analysis PI 260, Methods for Image Guided Neurosurgery PIKE CIHR Operating Grant: Functional MRI of Brain PI 1,031, Physiology PRAKASH NSERC Discovery Grant: Nanomaterial bacterial cell interactions: carbon nanotube formulation for targeted destruction of antibiotic resistance pathogenic bacterial cells PI 350, June 2013 Page 1 of 5

2 TEACHING AND LEARNING (UNDERGRADUATE AND GRADUATE): GRAD PROGRAM STATUS APPLICATIONS Table 2 summarizes applications to the Department s graduate program for the last 5 years. Demand for the Department s Graduate program remains strong. There were a total of 176 applications for the Master s and PhD programs in 2012; 157 met the Department s requirements. There were 13 offers of admission and 12 new registrants in the program. The size of the graduate program is not limited by the number of suitable applications but rather by our ability to provide adequate research and supervisory support. Table 2: History of Applications to BME Programs MASTERS Applicants Offers Accepted PHD Applicants Offers Accepted TOTAL Applicants Offers Accepted STUDENT CENSUS Table 3 summarizes the registration in the Department s graduate programs for the last five years. The Department remains very active in training highly qualified personnel at the graduate level. At the end of 2012 there were 23 master s students, 59 PhD students, and 7 postdoctoral fellows for a total of 89 active trainees. Moreover, throughout the year 22 students successfully completed their training in the Department; 10 master s and 4 PHD students graduated and 8 PDFS completed their fellowships. There were also 11 undergraduate students who spent time doing projects in the Department. Table 3: BME Student Census Masters Graduates New In Progress PhD 4 June 2013 Page 2 of 5

3 PDF Graduates New In Progress End of Stay New In progress INFORMATION TOOLS IN SUPPORT OF GRADUATE TRAINING A major ongoing initiative during 2012 was the continued development, deployment and evaluation of IT tools to assist in the processing of applications for our graduate program and the subsequent tracking of student progress. This takes the form of two database/applications: one for Admissions and a second for Student Tracking that are used by the Department s administrative and graduate program staff. Key functions of the Admissions application are management of: applicant rankings, internal admission decisions, entry requirements and recruitment award offers. Moreover, it provides an integrated communication platform between the GPD and GPC so that applicant issues may be communicated and addressed without having to resort to sending s between each other. Finally, reports may be generated on applicant statistics. The Admissions application integrates with the University s centralized data base to obtain the university admission status of an applicant. This allows the database to manage time sensitive recruitment and award offers. An applicant who fails to accept an offer of admission within a time window is flagged so that we may withdraw the recruitment award and offer it to an alternate candidate. Also, its display of the university admission status along with the internal departmental decision provides a comprehensive, up to date summary of each application. Key functions of the Tracking application are: integration with our admission database so that new students are imported automatically, automatic scheduling of progress meetings subject to university policies, tracking of advisory committees and awards. There is close integration with the McGill central Data Warehouse to generate a variety of augmented reports, including degree audits that are cumbersome to obtain from Minerva. Other reports provide access to student census, summarize times to completion, monitor supervisor performance, and more. Both applications interface to electronic copies of the student s complete record facilitating remote access. The tools, now in use for over a year, have proven to be invaluable in managing applicants and students. In particular the tracking database assists in keeping student progress in line with McGill Policies and prevents students from falling through the cracks. It is our strong impression that with the aid of this application, meetings are held in a timelier manner, problems are identified earlier, and students progress to completion more quickly. Indeed, the student tracking database is being considered as a model for the Milestones project that GPS is undertaking. Furthermore, after having demonstrated our database, other departments have expressed an immediate need to have our database customized for their use. Credit for the development of these applications must be given to Dr. Ross Wagner who was responsible for the implementation and to Ms. Pina Sorrini who guided the development procedure based on her extensive knowledge of the admission and student tracking procedures. RECRUITMENT AWARDS A second ongoing initiative was related to the use of the funds provided to the Department for the support of graduate students. The Department decided to use the majority of the funds from GPS to support the recruitment of high quality students by supplementing funds from the supervisors by 10k/year for two years for Masters and three 4 June 2013 Page 3 of 5

4 years for PhD students. Results for 2012 indicate that this was very successful since we had a high success rate with 7/9 offers accepted while the average GPA of these students was greater than COURSES Three new courses were approved during 2012: BMDE 510 Topics in Astrobiology (Nadeau) BMDE 512 Finite element Modelling in Biomedical Engineering (Funnell) BMDE 610 Functional Neuroimaging Fusion (Grova) STUDENTS Nine BME students held competitive research scholarships, including 4 NSERC post graduate fellowships, 2 FRSQ fellowships, and 3 from other sources. INVOLVEMENT IN THE COMMUNITY: Table 4 summarizes some of the most important community involvements of BME staff for Table 4: Selected Examples of BME Staff Community Involvement Name Community Involvement GALIANA Secretary & Treasurer, Neural Control of Movement Society, KEARNEY Chair of Expert Committee 406 Biomedical Engineering, Canada Foundation for Innovation 2012 Leading Edge and New Initiatives Funds Member, NSERC Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship Selection Committee McGill representative on Commission d Evaluation des Programmes established by CREPUQ to review the quality of all new proposals for all new University programs in the province of Quebec NADEAU Assistant Editor of the Journal Sensors Associate Editor of the journal : Frontiers in Neuroengineering PIKE Chair, CIHR Medical Physics and Imaging Committee(MPI) Chair, Scientific Advisory Board of Imaging Program, The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research Editorial board member and Handling Editor, for the Anatomy and Physiology Section of the Journal : NeuroImage TABRIZIAN Editor in Chief of the Journal: Materials Regional Editor (Canada) for: Journal of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering MILESTONES: APPOINTMENTS The Department appointed two new associate members in 2012 as part of its continuing effort to provide a focus for biomedical engineering research and graduate training on campus. These were: 4 June 2013 Page 4 of 5

5 Dr Baillet is a physicist N&N with research interests in methodological developments for functional and structural brain imaging and their application to clinical and cognitive Neuroscience Dr. Jamie Near is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry who is based at Brain Imaging Centre at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. His main research interest is in the development and implementation of advanced magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) data acquisition, processing and analysis techniques for accurate quantitative measurements of metabolite concentrations in the human brain.. LEAVE OF ABSENCE Dr. Denis Bobyn took a leave of absence starting 1 Sept HONOURS, AWARDS, AND PRIZES: STAFF Dr. David Juncker was selected by the Royal Society of Canada for the IAP Young Scientist award and attended the World Economic Forum New Champions meeting in Tianjin, China, Sept th 2012 as one of three Canadian and 35 other Young Scientists from around the world. He was also recognized as a ``Rising Star in Global Health by Grand Challenges Canada STUDENTS Student Supervisor Award DIDAR, Tohid TABRIZIAN Young Scientist Award, World Biomaterial Congress, Chengdu MedTech Challenge Excellence Award QASAIMEH, JUNCKER FQRNT étudiant chercheur étoile award. Mohammad SAVFAVIEH, Hosseinali JUNKER Winner, MedTech Excellence award, Campus de technologies de la santé, Quebec, Canada. JALALEDDINI, Kian KEARNEY Finalist in the Student Paper Competition at the 2012 IEEE International Conference on Engineering in Medicine and Biology. PAUL, Argula PRAKASH Geddes Award in Biomedical Engineering 4 June 2013 Page 5 of 5