Research

Forming new connections

The Center for Medical and Engineering Innovation (CMEI) fosters interdisciplinary research through multiple initiatives that engage Ohio State faculty, staff, trainees, students and extramural entities whose focus is to expand innovation and impact at the intersection of medicine and engineering.

Research activities include:

• Organized lectures with tours of research facilities and equipment demonstrations to increase personnel familiarization with resources on campus.
• Workshops for attendees to gain additional laboratory equipment or software expertise.
• Collaborative interactions with existing Ohio State departments, centers, and institutes to expand utilization of resources in new and ongoing research endeavors.

CMEI recognizes that major advancements in medicine will involve a multitude of engineering-related disciplines such as nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. Engineers working in concert with health professionals will alter the landscape for patient care. New developments are broadly expected in areas including advanced therapeutics (e.g. targeted drug delivery) and diagnostics (e.g. biosensors) as well as implantable and wearable devices. CMEI strives to facilitate innovative solutions and transformative applications such as these in medicine by promoting local collaborative efforts between physicians and engineers.

If you’re interested in collaborating with CMEI on a research project or educational activity, please submit this electronic form.

Launching innovative projects: CMEI Pilot Grants

CMEI seeks applications to its 2026-2027 pilot grant program.

The Center for Medicine and Engineering Innovation (CMEI) pilot grant program supports collaborations between Ohio State University colleges that initiate promising ventures at the medicine-engineering interface. Proposed research must have as Co-PIs at least one faculty member from the College of Engineering and one faculty member from a Health Sciences College. These collaborators must be testing new and innovative approaches (ideas, technologies, devices) directed at basic or clinically relevant biomedical research or expediting medical device development.
In funding awards, special consideration will be given to applications addressing Quantum Sensing for Bioimaging and Molecular Detection, Point of Care Medical Diagnostics, Precision Medicine and Genomic Engineering, Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, and Biomedical Robotics. Applications in other topic relevant areas are also welcomed. This program funds $35,000 grants to assist faculty in obtaining preliminary data that will result in a collaborative grant application for the NIH, or another agency or foundation, or lead to an entrepreneurial endpoint such as a patent. Revised applications previously submitted to this program will not be considered for funding unless there is strong evidence of significant interval progress in the science being proposed.

HOW TO APPLY:

Applications should meet the following criteria:

• The collaboration of at least two faculty investigators from different Schools as Co-PIs; one must be in a Health Sciences College and one must be in COE.
• All Co-PIs must be OSU faculty members and have PI status at OSU.
• Other personnel (but not Co-PIs) can include research staff, post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduate students from intellectually distinct disciplines.
• Include a statement indicating how the interdisciplinary approach will enhance the project’s impact.
• Clearly indicate how the work will result in a full peer-reviewed grant proposal, or how the work will drive device development and enhance OSU’s intellectual property profile.
• Include a brief cover letter stating commitment from each of the faculty Co-PIs.
• Provide a two page (maximum) biosketch for each of the participating faculty member Co-PIs.
• Include a list of current and pending research support of all participating faculty members.

The body of the application is restricted to 4 pages and must include a simple budget section. Sections to be covered specifically within the 4 pages are:

1. Introduction/Specific Aims
2. Background/Significance
3. Preliminary Data (optional) - “out-of-the-box” thinking is encouraged
4. Research Design and Methods
5. Summary of Collaborative Added Value
6. Simple budget

The cover letter, biosketches, current and pending support and literature citations are not included in the 4 page limit. Faculty salary is not eligible for support. Studies proposing human or animal studies must comply with University procedures and be approved prior to any spending. Formal submission to and approval of IACUC and IRB Committees is not required at the time of submission but is required for release of funds to occur.

Applications must be emailed as a single pdf to cmei@osumc.edu no later than 5 p.m. Wednesday, July 22, 2026. Late submissions will not be considered. Awards will be announced by August 28, 2026 with funding expected to start by October 1, 2026. For additional information, contact Dr. David Eckmann david.eckmann@osumc.edu.The next request for applications for CMEI pilot grant funding is likely to be announced in the late Spring of 2027. This information will be posted to the CMEI website as well at https://medicine.osu.edu/departments/cmei/research.

Current awardees for 2025-2026

 

Ohio State University’s Center for Medical and Engineering Innovation (CMEI) is pleased to announce the awards for its 2025-2026 pilot grant funding. Three teams of OSU faculty will receive $35,000 over the next year to fund their cross-college collaborations initiate promising ventures at the medicine-engineering interface. Funds are to be used to assist the awardees in obtaining preliminary data that will result in a collaborative grant application for the NIH, or another agency or foundation, or lead to an entrepreneurial endpoint such as a patent. Awardees and their projects are:

• Laura Schwartz, PhD (Pediatrics, COM) and David Wood, PhD (Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, COE)
  Project: A Production Platform for Tagless RNase-7 to Enable Clinical Development
  Drs. Schwartz and Wood will focus this pilot grant on producing tagless RNase 7 N-terminal antimicrobial peptides by integrating peptide engineering and microbiological validation with customizable expression systems, protein design tools, and clinically relevant pathogens. This platform will serve as a foundation for future applications in UTI therapeutics, as well as topical treatments for skin infections.
• Matthew Stratton, PhD (Physiology and Cell Biology, COM) and Jinghua Li, PhD (Materials Science and Engineering, COE)
  Project: SiLEAP: A Spatially Resolved Imaging Platform for Localized Electrophysiological Signal Detection in the Cardiac System
  Drs. Stratton and Li aim to develop a flexible, light-addressable electronic platform for high-resolution detection of bioelectrical signals by combining semiconductor physics and optoelectronics. The resultant technology is expected to enable spatially precise, label-free electrophysiological recording and will be tested in cardiomyocyte culture with application to drug development and regenerative medicine.
• Mengying Hu, PhD (Pharmaceutics and Pharmacology, College of Pharmacy), Samir Ghadiali, PhD (Biomedical Engineering, COE), Sriram Vaidyanathan, PhD (Pediatrics, COM) and Joshua Englert, MD (Pulmonary and Critical Care, Internal Medicine, COM)
  Project: Development of Relaxin Gene Therapy for Pulmonary Delivery to Cure Lung Fibrosis
  Drs. Hu, Ghadiali, Vaidyanathan, and Englert aim to develop lipid nanoparticles specifically designed for pulmonary deposition via nebulization in order to deliver a curative gene therapy based to fibrotic lungs. Anti-fibrotic effects of Relaxin mRNA, a natural extracellular matrix remodeling and anti-inflammatory peptide, delivered via nebulization of nanoparticle formulations will be evaluated in vitro and in vivo. 

Previous awardees have included

10/1/2024 – 9/30/2025

• Megan Ballinger, PhD (Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Internal Medicine, COM) and Aleksander Skardal, PhD (Biomedical Engineering, COE)
  Project: Validation of a Humanized Fibrotic Lung-on-a-Chip System
• Michelle Nassal, MD, PhD (Emergency Medicine, COM) and Emre Ertin, PhD (Electrical and Computer Engineering, COE)
  Project: Towards Personalized Intervention Protocols for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation: Digital Twin Modeling of the Cardio-Pulmonary System in Distress Using Reduced Order Models of Physiology and Generative AI Techniques
• Juliet Varghese, PhD (Biomedical Engineering, COE) and Saurabh Rajpal, MD (Cardiovascular Medicine, Internal Medicine, COM)
  Project: Developing a Single-Session Cardiopulmonary CPET-CMR Exam at Low-Field MRI

9/15/2023 – 9/14/2024

• Nathan Doble, PhD (Opthalmology & Visual Science, COO) and Stacey Choi, PhD (Opthalmology & Visual Science, COO), Srinivasan Parthasarathy, PhD (Computer Science and Engineering, COE), and Rajiv Ramnath, PhD (Computer Science and Engineering, COE)
  Project: Generation of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) B-scan Images Directly from Spectrograph Data using AI
• Megan Malara, PhD (CDME, COE) and Kyle VanKoevering, MD (Otolaryngology, COM)
  Project: Development of a 3D Printing Platform Towards a Personalized, Tissue Engineered Vascularized Bone Scaffold
• Nicholas Ferrell, PhD (Nephrology, Internal Medicine, COM) and Natalia Higuita-Castro, PhD (Biomedical Engineering, COE)
  Project: Targeted Cellular Delivery of Nanoengineered Extracellular Vesicles for Acute Kidney Injury

9/15/2022 – 9/14/2023

• Asimina Kiourty, PhD (Electrical and Computer Engineering, COE) and Toshimasa Okabe, MD (Cardiovascular Medicine, COM)
  Project: Non-Invasive Determination of HV Interval Using a Wearable MagnetoCardioGraphy Sensor
• Timothy F. Plageman Jr., PhD (COO) and Katelyn Swindle-Reilly, PhD (Biomedical Engineering, COE)
  Project: Optimization of a Novel Technique to Bioengineer Lens Organoids
• Emanuele Cocucci, MD, PhD (Division of Pharmaceutics and Pharmacology, COP), Derek Hansford, PhD (Biomedical Engineering, COE) and Francesca Cottini, MD (Hematology, COM)
  Project: Development of a Localized, Time Controlled Perfusion System for Lattice Light Sheet Microscopy