With funding from the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Defense and Synthes Corporation, the Institute of Biological Interfaces of Engineering is at the forefront of biomaterials technologies.   

One of the major areas that we are basically involved in now with regards to orthopedics is the interface between biomaterials and the human body; and without investigating that interface, no matter which systems you're in, we are going to be in great troubles. So starting to look at interfaces is certainly going to be, I think, the way of the future.

The Institute is bringing together - accomplished researchers & clinicians - across disciplines - to solve complex problems and to quickly move those solutions from the lab to the clinic.

It’s not just one university or one scientist but it’s bringing together the specialties and the talents of many scientists to solve a single problem.  A good example of this is what we’re doing right now with the Medical University of South Carolina.

Dr. Betsy Davis, a prosthodontist at the Medical University of South Carolina and  Randy Emert, a Graphics & Industrial Engineer with  Clemson University are using their seemingly unrelated areas of expertise to benefit patients with head and neck cancer.

It's, I think, one of the most devastating forms of cancer because it affects your facial appearance and speaking, swallowing, and chewing.  Folks come to me because they are missing a part of their mouth or a part of their face and so my job is to make a prosthesis so that it will restore function for the patient.

Prior to this partnership, it took Dr. Davis and her staff up to a week to handsculpt and paint a prosthetic nose, ear or eye.

With the new technology that we have available now we have actually adapted and sculpted in one day as opposed to 3 or 4.

With the computer model it's less time being here and gives you more time to be at work and you don't have to take vacation time and it seems to fit better than the hand sculpted one did.

People around the country and around the world are using the technology now and they do it on sporadic basis’ a lot of times where it may be done to show that it can be done.  No one is really doing it on a routine basis, in a regular application with the clinic where we have that direct contact with the doctor and the patients in giving them the prosthesis and the product that they are looking for.

Through IBIOE, researchers and clinicians - like these - will be able to work together not only in the real world – but in the virtual world - utilizing a highly sophisticated cyber infrastructure.

Clinical research and surgical training is very regional and so if you connect only with one particular academic medical center then you're getting one perspective only – and so the beauty to IBIOE is that you can actually connect with a diversity of medical centers not just in SC - not just in the United States but globally.

This direct communication between our group, which is here in Charlotte and the group in Clemson, but also some clinician dispatch in some other part of the country or other part of the world for that matter.  So that would basically shorten the time between the information gathered in a research setting and another clinician.

While the science of IBIOE is cutting edge and complex - and the future implications are mind boggling, the underlying goal is fundamental.

This interaction and the networking and the creation of the institute involves the surgeon with the scientist, and the surgeon's clinical problem drives the issues that the scientist is solving  ....

So this allows us to take these discoveries and not keep them in the research lab - to move them out to the public and to use them to make a better life for people, that’s what this is all about.