Leila Ladani is on a mission to cultivate a human-centered mindset to guide the design and manufacturing of biomedical devices and implants. Ladani, a professor in the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, is among pioneering biomedical engineers advancing the understandings of how devices can be used more effectively in clinical settings.

Ladani was recently awarded a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation’s Research Traineeship program to develop a new biomedical device manufacturing training program at ASU. Her project, Design and Manufacturing of Medical Devices and Implants: Cultivating a Human-Centered Mindset, will connect engineering students with health care professionals and patients to introduce them to the ethical principles, laws and policies associated with the development and use of biomedical technologies. 

“We want to put the users right at the forefront of innovation because the users are patients or clinicians,” Ladani says.“We want to make sure that what we are designing and manufacturing is something that they can actually use, with the mindset that human society is very complex.”

During the process of developing her own device, Ladani discovered a knowledge gap between biomedical engineers and the communities they serve.

In collaboration with Mayo Clinic and one of its well-known surgical oncologists, Dr. Barbara Pockaj, Ladani is developing a device to determine the presence of cancer in tissue margins during a lumpectomy – the surgical removal of a portion or “lump” of breast tissue, typically as a treatment for a malignant tumor or breast cancer.

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