The origins of bioengineering and the research challenges in bio-medical engineering today by Emeritus Professor Heinz Wolff

Abstract

Tuesday 25 April – Brunel Institute for Bioengineering Founded in 1983 by Professor Heinz Wolff, BIB specialises in science and engineering for space, health care and contract work for industry. The institute has developed an international reputation for its research and innovative developments and has incubated a number of spin-out companies that are taking the fruits of its research into the market place.

Professor Heinz Wolff is a German-British scientist, and television and radio presenter. He is best known for his television and radio work, including the TV series The Great Egg Race.

He was born in Berlin, and moved to Britain with his family at the age of ten, arriving on the day World War II broke out. After school, he worked at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford and at the Pneumoconiosis Research Unit near Cardiff, before going to University College London, where he gained a first class honours degree in Physiology and Physics.

He spent much of his early career in bioengineering, a term which he himself coined in 1954 to take account of recent advances in physiology. He became an honorary member of the European Space Agency in 1975, and in 1983 he founded the Brunel Institute for Bioengineering, which is involved in biological research during weightless spaceflight. Wolff was the scientific director and co-founder of Project Juno, the private British-Soviet joint venture which sent Helen Sharman to the Mir space station.

He is now Emeritus Professor of Bioengineering at Brunel University.