Mississippi State associate provost Jerry Gilbert--widely known for his studies of the aging process--will become president of the Institute of Biological Engineering Jan. 1.
A Jackson native and faculty member at the university since 1988, Gilbert will preside over the national professional organization's 2005 annual meeting next March in Athens, Ga. As president-elect, he has worked this year to help IBE develop relationships with major professional engineering societies that have member ties to biological science.
"Biological engineering is a branch of engineering that deals with living systems at the cell, organism or ecosystem levels," said Gilbert, who was named MSU associate provost and associate vice president of academic affairs last January.
"It is unique in that it interfaces with the biological and medical sciences, the engineering sciences, mathematics and the computational sciences," he added.
He said the 10-year-old IBE developed out of an association with the American Society of Agricultural Engineers, but now stands as an independent professional organization with no allegiance to any discipline-based engineering organization.
Gilbert, who served as head of MSU's agricultural and biological engineering department 1996-2004, specializes in orthopedic biomechanics. Researchers in the field analyze the forces, stresses and deformations that occur in different structures of human and animal life.
As a teacher, Gilbert utilizes that knowledge to help students apply engineering principles to solve physiological problems associated with aging.
"I want students to go away with an understanding of the aging processes and realize that as engineers and scientists, there are things they can do to help with these processes," said the 1973 Jackson Preparatory School graduate.
"What makes the course so unique is that it pulls from several fields such as biology, statistics and general engineering to explain why and how the human body ages," said one of Gilbert's former students, Shawn W. Sanders of Jackson.
Gilbert received a bachelor's degree in biological engineering at MSU in 1977, then completed a doctorate in biomedical engineering from Duke University in 1982. He was a visiting assistant professor in mechanical engineering at North Carolina State University before joining the University of North Carolina faculty in 1983 as an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery and biomedical engineering.
Gilbert returned to Mississippi State in 1988 as an associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering. He has been recognized four separate times by MSU's College of Engineering as a Distinguished Hearin-Hess Professor.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For more information, contact Dr. Jerry Gilbert at (662) 325-3742.
