SPIS Featured in ASBMB Today for Engineering and Technology Development

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

ASBMB Today, a monthly publication distributed to the members of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB), recently featured the work performed by two groups of engineers at NIH: CIT’s Signal Processing and Instrumentation Section (SPIS) and the National Institute of Mental Health’s Section on Instrumentation.

SPIS provides the NIH Intramural Research Program (IRP) with engineering support and technology development when biomedical researchers need laboratory equipment and software that is not available commercially.

“Our projects at NIH are rarely a one-off, a one-time effort,” said Tom Pohida, chief of SPIS. “We’ll place an instrument in (a researcher’s) lab, and then their ideas change, methods evolve, instruments need to be modified-- then there’s a second- or a third-generation system to design and build.”

In the article, Pohida also highlighted how SPIS mentors college and high school students through summer internship programs, including NIH’s Pathways and one conducted by NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. “We’re able to give students a meaningful exercise for their career development and get them to a point where they’re productive and working on research projects at NIH, developing instruments and software algorithms,” he said.

To read more about the work done at SPIS and the other engineering groups at NIH, read the full article at ASBMB Today.

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