The University of Houston Cullen College of Engineering has opened a laboratory devoted to enhancing undergraduate education through hands-on instruction in bioanalytics.
The Biomedical Engineering Bioanalytics Undergraduate Laboratory, which officially opened in the fall, allows students to learn biophysical laws governing cell behavior to better understand how RNA, DNA and protein are regulated.
The lab is located on the first floor of engineering building one, and comparable to the college’s Biomedical Engineering Research Core Laboratory (BMERCL) — featuring many of the same state-of-the-art pieces of equipment housed in this larger, research laboratory.
“Our biomedical program is unlike a lot of others,” said Matthew Franchek, director of the college’s biomedical engineering program. “We are breaking things down on every level and showing students how it works. This is the playground that lets them do that.”
Previously office space, the area was renovated and equipped with close to $500,000 in funding from the dean, the college’s department of mechanical engineering and the UH System facilities planning and construction department.
At present, the lab is primarily being used for a senior level bioanalytics course led by Daniel Martinez that teaches the principles of operation and instrumentation for both traditional and modern high-throughput bioanalytical methods including techniques used for measurement of RNA, DNA, proteins or drugs in biological samples.
“The students’ four-year journey through the BME program culminates in this course with real-world biomedical activities and experiments in a controlled research setting,” said Daniel Martinez, an associate professor in the UH Department of Health and Human Performance and the Cullen College’s biomedical engineering program. “The students taking bioanalytics receive first-hand knowledge of identifying an assay and then using the appropriate techniques and equipment within the bioanalytics teaching laboratory to help in their quest for an answer. Experiments are discussed and designed during lecture and analyzed during the laboratory portion using the identical research equipment used at most modern day biotech companies.”
Among the first students to use the lab last semester was biomedical engineering major Valor Thomas, who felt the experience helped connect instruction from previous courses through hands-on lab time.
“This was the first course where I was actually able to see what I was studying in class,” said Thomas, who recently entered his senior year of the program. “We learned about DNA and RNA, basically biomolecular engineering, in the lab. These were things that, before, I only read about in books.”
Administrators see it as a place for these students to first get their feet wet and learn to use high-end equipment such as a qPCR machine—allowing students to measure gene transcription levels in real time.
Their hope is that the lab will help jumpstart more undergraduate research at the college — one of University of Houston President and UH System Chancellor Renu Khator’s initiatives that are intended to help boost the institution to a tier one university.