Courses Taught by Patrick M. Boyle
BIOEN 400: Fundamentals of Bioengineering Design
Description: Fundamentals of Bioengineering Design is a project-based course that exposes undergraduate students to the engineering design process and incorporates modern tools and methodologies for developing innovative health technologies. The course is structured around a team project in which students will strategically craft a plan to carry out a successful exercise in bioengineering design. This will be supplemented with lectures, case-studies, and hands-on activities to instruct students in engineering design principles and processes. Throughout the quarter, students will engage in critical design review of their technological solution. The course culminates in student presentations, during which each team will describe their design plan to the entire class. Throughout the quarter, special emphasis is placed on designing for social responsibility and healthcare equity.
Learning Objectives: (1) Implement and apply a comprehensive stakeholder analysis and market analysis to identify and characterize biomedical needs, compare possible solutions, and lay out plans to develop healthcare technologies subject to various technical constraints; (2) Implement the engineering design process to anticipate and prepare for realistic practical constraints (healthcare equity, environmental sustainability, manufacturability, affordability, safety, regulatory concerns, etc.); (3) Use professional/technical communication to effectively and succinctly document design; (4) Enhance and demonstrate effective teamwork skills, including fostering a collaborative, inclusive, welcoming, and intellectually invigorating environment; (5) Implement statistics to manage multivariable inputs using design of experiments (DoE/DoX), allowing for selection of an optimized design through systematic engineering judgment; and, (6) Reinforce and apply knowledge from other courses (both within and outside the bioengineering core) to conceive and evaluate design solutions through engineering analysis.
BIOEN 484/584: Computational Modeling & Simulation of Bioelectricity
Description: This course will explore quantitative modeling and simulation of electrically excitable cells, tissues, and organs, with a focus on cardiac electrophysiology. Topics include biophysical formulations of ion channel gating kinetics, mathematical representation of bioelectric propagation arising from intercellular coupling, and nonlinear dynamics underlying the initiation, perpetuation, and termination of cardiac arrhythmia.
Students will use the Bioelectricity sandbox system (accessed via their own personal computers) to run simulations using openCARP, a sophisticated finite element software package custom-designed for cardiac electrophysiology. Rather than focusing on the development of new modeling tools, simulation exercises in this course will focus on applications to help understand and apply complex concepts learned in the lecture material.
Learning Objectives: (1) Understand and apply quantitative descriptions of electricity generation in the hearts of living organisms; (2) Recognize equivalent circuit representations of excitable biological tissue and anticipate in generalized terms how pathological changes in tissue properties will affect component values; (3) Analyze cell- and tissue simulations of electrically excitable mammalian tissue, with a particular focus on human electrophysiology; (4) Explain the biophysical basis of signals recorded non-invasively (e.g., body surface potentials in the ECG); (5) Describe qualitatively the factors underlying initiation, perpetuation, and termination of arrhythmia; and, (6) [grad level only] Assess reproducibility and model credibility for published computational cardiac electrophysiology studies.