Q: What does the center do?
Medina: The center was founded in 2020 by Mary Frecker, department head of mechanical engineering, to bring together technologists at University Park with clinicians at Hershey. There’s a long-standing problem, which is not unique to Penn State, where you have a really strong engineering program and a really strong clinical medicine program, but no platform for them to talk and come up with technology solutions to address human health problems. The center was founded to better enable these connections, foster collaborations, and then support that with seed award funding, training programs, and graduate training fellowships to build an infrastructure that would create new collaborations.
Q: What are some of the biodevices the center has developed?
Medina: Center faculty have developed a whole series of wearable sensors that can detect biomarkers in sweat, saliva, or eye fluids. There are also sensors being designed to test blood, urine, and stool for cancers and other diseases. Other researchers are creating surgical robots, or customized 3D-printed tissues that could replace dysfunctional or missing organs. Biodevices are also playing an important role in areas outside of medicine, including collecting agricultural data, processing it, and interpreting it into something that is usable. This is an area the center is interested in expanding into.
Q: Does that mean developing wearable devices for agricultural workers?
Medina: Could be, yes. It could also be devices mounted onto a drone, for example, that collect field data. We’re also thinking about biologic devices that are engineered to respond to environmental cues, that can be planted or disseminated in the soil and then give off a certain chemical signal when they’ve detected a toxin, a pathogen, or a pest.
Q: You’ve recently taken over as the center’s director: What’s your area of expertise?
Medina: My background is in nanomaterial design—developing nanoscale devices to better deliver drugs into tissues or try to diagnose physiological disorders and dysfunctions at the cell scale.
Q: Is there a particular device you’re working on?
Medina: In my lab, we’re working on devices that can help deliver important bacteria to the human gut to treat disease and dysfunction. We’re also developing similar devices that will deliver beneficial microbes to the roots of crops to enhance agricultural sustainability. My lab has spent most of its time in the human health space: We’ve developed nanotechnologies to treat antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and devices that will allow us to use ultrasound to image specific cells or tissues and then create drug delivery applications related to those. We’re very excited about continuing to translate these technologies to a wide range of ecosystems that impact human health.
Scott Medina ’06 Eng is the William and Wendy Korb Early Career Professor of Biomedical Engineering.
