The researcher also created the first computer-to-brain interface by combining computational intelligence with online brain activity recordings to analyze brain responses from humans and animals. To encourage scientists like Micheli-Tzanakou to advance healing technologies, the Whitaker Foundation, created in 1975, has focused its giving on biomedical engineering.
Inspired by Uncas A. Whitaker, an engineer and attorney who believed the marriage of medicine and engineering would bring advances in healing, the foundation has boosted its spending from $14 million to $60 to $70 million annually for a total of $575 million since 1992. Whitaker officials have staked the foundation's endowment to create jobs, advance teaching and research: they plan to close it in 2006 after spending nearly $1 billion on biomedical engineering.
Elsewhere, research in the field that originally helped pioneer open-heart surgery now includes bioengineered skin, timed-release drug capsules, artificial articulated joints, and artificial organs. At the University of Michigan, ...
