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
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.
The next request for applications for CMEI pilot grant funding is likely to be announced in the late Spring of 2026. Please refer to this page and various Ohio State Universiry news sources (e.g., onCampus, HealthBeat Digest, etc.) for future program announcements.
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