Center for Biomedical Engineering Technology Acceleration (BETA Center)

National Institute Of Biomedical Imaging And Bioengineering, Bethesda

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

The BETA Center is being developed as an NIH-wide organization to connect intramural researchers with engineering practices and resources to apply to their own research. This effort has two major immediate goals: increasing interactions among and with the engineering and physical science researchers already on campus; and recruiting new engineering talent to the intramural program. To these ends, we have focused on building up physical resources, including computational capabilities, collaborative spaces, and a MakerSpace, as well as on community building through a series of meetings and workshops. We have assembled a team of scientists and engineers to help guide and direct NIH IRP researchers interested in using engineering principles and tools to address their research or translational questions. The BETA Center also includes a number of training programs and recruiting efforts for undergraduates, postbacs, postdocs, and investigators. ** Resources for research collaboration: *BETA Center MakerSpace: This year the BETA Center opened the first user-accessible MakerSpace at NIH, where researchers and other intramural staff can be trained on and use modern rapid-fabrication capabilities to develop custom engineering solutions for their experiments and projects. The MakerSpace offers support across five broad areas: CAD design, laser cutting, 3D printing, electropolishing, and electronics. The initial suite of capabilities includes: two workstations with CAD design software; a laser cutter; multiple fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printers; a suite of stereolithography (SLA) 3D printers and postprocessing equipment, including two sets that are reserved for biocompatible materials only; a metal 3D printer capable of making high-resolution parts from stainless steel or cobalt chrome using powder bed laser fusion; a dry electropolisher; hand tools and open areas for assembly; and basic electronic equipment for assembling and troubleshooting custom devices. BETA Center MakerSpace staff have coordinated installation and completed training on this equipment, and have worked with NIH DOHS to develop operating procedures and monitoring. After a well-attended open house event in May 2025, MakerSpace staff have run regular introduction tours and equipment training sessions for intramural staff. To date, these have attracted over a hundred participants from multiple ICs (NIBIB, NCATS, NIMH, NICHD, NIAID, NEI, NIDDK, NHLBI, NINDS, NIDCD, NIA, CC, OD, ORF, FAES) and from a range of positions/career stages, including: program managers, postdoctoral fellows, biologists, staff scientists, lab managers, animal facility specialists, senior investigators, and postbaccalaureate fellows. BETA MakerSpace staff have presented at the NIH research festival, BETA workshops, and before the NIH lab managers group. *BETA Center Systems and Computational Biology Section NIH IRP researchers from NCI, NIAID, NIAMS, and NIBIB have engaged with Jacob Davis, the BETA Center Systems and Computational Biology Biomedical Engineer, to begin modeling collaborations. These include agent-based modeling of immune response to cancer, pathway modeling of immune cell gene knockouts, and analysis of diffusion tensor MRI data. Dr. Davis also developed and taught an inaugural two-hour introductory modeling course, which used the IL-1 signaling pathway as a model system for developing equations and implementing computational models in Copasi. There was interest in the course from more than 40 researchers from 9 different NIH institutes as well as from the FDA – to include visiting fellows, graduate students, staff scientists, clinicians, and primary investigators. Due to the hands-on nature of the course, only 10 were allowed to attend the pilot session; based on the enthusiastic response to the course and feedback from the participants in the pilot session, a longer course is now under development. *BETA Center Biomaterials Section Dr. Carey Dougan joined the BETA Center team in August of 2024 as an expert in soft biomaterials, both natural and synthetic. Dr. Dougan has developed a set of complementary protocols for the mechanical characterization equipment housed in BETA and NIBIB’s Biomedical Engineering and Physical Science (BEPS) shared resource, including a rotational rheometer, a mechanical tester, and a cavitation rheology apparatus, providing much-needed expertise in matching the experimental capabilities of the equipment with the research needs for hydrogel characterization, which are often constrained by sample volume and time. These capabilities have found use in three collaborative projects to date, with investigators from NHLBI, NIGMS, and NIBIB. A suite of PEG-based materials and auxiliary equipment has been acquired to enable rapid response to investigator needs for custom hydrogel synthesis; this versatile system can be used to generate materials with tunable stiffness and a range of pore sizes, as well as materials that include adhesive ligands and proteolytic cleavable peptides. Research collaborations have been initiated for projects across multiple ICs, including NIAID, VRC/NIAID, NIDCR, and NCI. Dr. Dougan has presented at multiple BETA Center workshops and events, and is currently planning a hands-on short course on working with organoids that will be co-taught by the BETA Center research team. ** BETA Center led Events for Expansion of Biomedical Engineering at NIH BETA Center continues to host Research Meet and Greet Sessions featuring multiple talks followed by poster presentations and networking. Presenters are asked to focus on their laboratory capabilities and techniques of interest for collaboration, or on projects or problems for which they were seeking help. These sessions have been extremely popular, with 50-100 participants at each event, and many conversations about prospective collaborations during the networking sessions. 4 sessions were held (Nov, Dec, Feb, April) with 15 speakers from multiple ICs (NCATS, NCI, NIA, NIAID, NIBIB, NICHD, NIDDK, NINDS). *BUILDING BRIDGES EVENT On October 22, 2024, NIBIB and BETA Center hosted over 300 participants for a daylong conference on the NIH campus open to the public with registration: “Building Bridges Across NIH and the Broader Engineering Community,” to help connect the NIH intramural research program with the extramural biomedical engineering community, and to foster connections between engineers, clinicians, and scientists across NIH. Itinerary for the event featured: - Opening Fireside Chat with Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, NIH Director and Dr. Bruce Tromberg, NIBIB Director. - Plenary and invited main-stage talks in Masur Auditorium - Thematic breakout sessions for more than 40 research talks from investigators, postdocs, and graduate students on 1) Orthopedic and Neuromuscular Systems, 2) Women’s Health and Engineering, 3) Novel Biomedical Technologies, 4) Cardio/Vascular Systems, 5) Cancer Therapies and Technologies, and 6) Biomedical Imaging - Panel discussion on Innovation, Industry, and NIH featuring about translational aspects of biomedical engineering with clinicians, engineers, and biotechnology industry leaders - NIH Facility/Laboratory tours including Neurorehabilitation and Biomechanics Lab at the NIH Clinical Center (CC), Radiology and Imaging Sciences at NIH Clinical Center (CC/NCI), Human Imaging Tour (NINDS), Animal Imaging Tour (NINDS), IDEAS (NIBIB), Vaccine Research Center (NIAID), and NCATS Facility at Shady Grove - More than 130 scientific posters from intramural and extramural researchers, - NIH Program directors and grants management specialists meeting with extramural PIs, grad students and postdocs. *Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Meeting – NIH Special Sessions With the BMES conference in Baltimore in October 2024, BETA Center recruited a number of NIH staff to lead over a dozen special sessions at the conference, on topics that included biomedical engineering career paths at NIH and at other federal agencies, funding opportunities, FDA standards development, opportunities for collaboration with NIH intramural researchers, and support for entrepreneurship and commercialization through NIH. There were also three sessions on three focused initiatives: the NIH Medical Imaging and Data Resource Center (MIDRC), an artificial intelligence-ready data commons available to researchers to fuel machine intelligence research; NIBIB initiatives on development and dissemination of imaging phantoms; and NCI/NSF SPARK for material scientists and cancer researchers. *PAIR-UP Imaging Workshop The BETA Center, together with NIBIB’s Advanced Imaging and Microscopy (AIM) Resource, hosted the first PAIR-UP Advanced Imaging Workshop to be held on the NIH Campus in October, 2024. The twenty-five participants, ranging from graduate students to tenured faculty, were given a hands-on introduction to techniques including light sheet microscopy and other super-resolution optical imaging methods, two-photon microscopy, MINFLUX, atomic force microscopy, and image processing with machine learning modules.