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 2025-2026 pilot grant program
The 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 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 Point of Care Medical Diagnostics, Precision Medicine and Genomic Engineering, Biocompatible Materials and Tissue Engineering, Medical Virtual Reality, and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning for Clinical Decision Making. Applications in other topic 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.
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 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 OSU’s intellectual property profile.
- Include a single cover letter stating commitment from each faculty Co-PI.
- Provide a two page (maximum) biosketch for each participating faculty Co-PI.
- 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:
- Introduction/Specific Aims
- Background/Significance
- Preliminary Data (optional) - “out-of-the-box” thinking is encouraged
- Research Design and Methods
- Summary of Collaborative Added Value
- 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. Thursday, July 31, 2025. Late submissions will not be considered. Awards will be announced by August 22, 2025 with funding expected to start by October 1, 2025. 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 2026. Please watch this space and various OSU news sources for 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