Imoukhuede, Payne named AIMBE Fellows
Two faculty members from Washington University in St. Louis have been named fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). According to AIMBE, its College of Fellows is limited to the top 2% of medical and biological engineers.
They are two of 174 engineers to receive this honor in 2021. They will be inducted during a virtual ceremony March 26.
Princess Imoukhuede, associate professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, is also the school’s director of diversity initiatives. She uses computational models and quantitative measurements to better understand several aspects of vascular signaling.
In her lab, Imoukhuede marries the two lines of inquiry in order to unravel vascular signaling complexities and achieve rational control of angiogenesis. There are more than 70 angiogenesis-related diseases, including cancers, where abnormal blood vessels sustain tumor growth, development and metastasis. The bottom-up systems biology paradigm also offers insights into other cardiovascular diseases and women’s health.
Her honors include: the NSF CAREER Award; the Young Innovator in Nanobiotechnology Award; and inclusion in the AIChE Journal 2019 Futures Series. Imoukhuede is an advocate for women and minorities in engineering and was named one of 1,000 “inspiring Black scientists” by Cell Mentor.
Philip R. O. Payne is founding director of the university’s Institute for Informatics, chief data scientist for the School of Medicine and the Janet and Bernard Becker Professor. Payne is an international leader in the fields of translational bioinformatics and clinical research informatics. His research has included the use of knowledge engineering, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction design principles to improve the design and conduct of data-intensive clinical and translational research programs. His work also concerns the delivery of new evidence produced by such research at the point of care through the use and optimization of health-care information technology platforms.
At Washington University, Payne, who is also associate dean for health information and data science, has expanded the informatics education and resources available to the university community through recruitment of more than a dozen informatics faculty members and many affiliated investigators across 10 departments and three schools. Under his leadership, Washington University now offers new certificate, master’s and doctoral programs in biomedical informatics and data science.
In recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of medical informatics, he also has been elected a fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association and the American College of Medical Informatics