Dr. Enrique J. Berjano of the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain) spent the past several weeks visiting Penn State Wilkes-Barre as a guest lecturer and observer of education in America.
On Friday, October 16, Berjano presented a brief program on how engineering as a field supports biomedical engineering, emphasizing the importance of communication and sharing information between engineers, doctors, and the companies that transform an engineer's designs into the tools doctors use.
Berjano presented a second lecture on October 27, this time highlighting the use of mathematical models in everyday life and their importance in the biomedical realm.
An Associate Professor of Electronic Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Berjano became interested in biomedical engineering when he spent time as a field clinical engineer and had a first-hand experience with applied research. Berjano said one advantage the United States has over Spain is that there are companies in the U.S. that are actually building medical devices, as opposed to Spain, which typically imports medical devices created by the U.S. and other countries.
One of Dr. Berjano's main goals on his visit to the United States is to take home with him the knowledge of communications courses. Berjano noted that at his home university, there are no specific communication skills courses for the engineering students; such courses just are not required. However, Berjano has realized that in the engineering world, particularly in biomedical engineering, communication is critical, especially when lives are on the line.
For more information, please contact Dr. Albert Lozano, Professor of Engineering at Penn State Wilkes-Barre, at [email protected] or 570-675-9245.
