Biomedical engineering program dedicates a new facility

Michael Hagearty
Institute Communications and Public Affairs

To paraphrase University System Chancellor Thomas Meredith, this is becoming routine.

For the third time in as many weeks, Georgia Tech christened a new multimillion-dollar project. Coming on the heels of Technology Square and GT-Savannah, College of Engineering Dean Don Giddens directed the dedication of the U.A. Whitaker Biomedical Engineering Building, which will house teaching and research endeavors for its joint department of biomedical engineering with Emory University.

	COE Dean Don Giddens, at the Whitaker Building dedication.

In “unifying the talents of faculty and students at both universities,” Giddens said, the field of biomedical engineering is witnessing the inaugural partnership between a public and a private institution that he hopes will serve as an example for other universities.

The U.A. Whitaker Building provides 90,000 square feet of faculty offices, classroom instruction space and instructional laboratories. The building will also house 25 faculty researchers supported by five large labs.

The research pursuits of the program include medical imaging, computer-assisted surgery, medical devices and more efficient delivery of drugs to disease sites.

The $23 million facility is the end result of an initiative begun 15 years ago by Tech faculty members seeking to create an interdisciplinary program bridging the health and engineering sciences. By 1997, Tech and Emory University were studying the feasibility of a joint program. Former Provost and Vice President Michael Thomas and Emory Dean of Medicine Thomas Lawley established an advisory committee to assess this proposition. A few months later, the partnership was approved.

Even before having its own facility, the biomedical engineering program was regarded as one of the nation’s best. Current rankings by U.S. News and World Report list Tech’s graduate and undergraduate programs as sixth and seventh, respectively.

The Life Sciences and Technology Complex includes the Ford Environmental Science and Technology Building (foreground), the U.A. Whitaker Biomedical Engineering Building and the Parker H. Petit Biotechnology Building.

Together with the Ford Environmental Science and Technology Building and the Petit Biotechnology Building, the Whitaker Building is the third phase of the new Life Sciences and Technology Complex. A fourth building — for materials and molecular science, with a focus on biotechnology, and environmental and sustainable technologies — is currently in the fundraising and planning stages.

For the speakers, the tone was a mixture of excitement and expectation.

Ta Ressa Wills, an undergraduate student who will be among the first to receive a biomedical engineering degree from Tech, expressed relief that classes and labs would no longer be in cramped quarters scattered across campus.

For President Wayne Clough, these new facilities mark a point on the continuum, providing students and researchers with the tools to excel.

“All of these wonderful things that have happened are just a precursor,” he said. “I’m excited to be a part of it and help support it.”

The Whitaker Foundation was created and funded by Uncas A. Whitaker upon his death in 1975. Since its inception, the foundation has supported interdisciplinary medical research, with a principal focus on biomedical engineering. To date, it has contributed more than $700 million to universities and medical schools to support faculty research, graduate students, program development and building a permanent infrastructure for biomedical engineering.

Burtt Holmes, chairman of the Whitaker Foundation Governing Committee, said the people in place at Georgia Tech and Emory made funding the new facility an obvious choice.