“The genealogy [of biomedical engineering] dates from as far back as circa 3000 B.C. [Imothep, Egypt]”
Joel L Cuello BE PhD
Historical Facts and Statements
2026: 25 years since my 1st teleECG device individually manufactured for the graduation project
2025: My own 30 years of Biomedical Engineering
2024: 30 years of Romanian Biomedical Engineering
“Florin Topoliceanu MD PhD is considered Founder and Mentor of The 1st Medical Bioengineering Faculty in Romania at the Gr. T. Popa University of Medicine and Pharmacy Iași.
He was a passionate academic figure whom I had the honour to study with, and a man full of life to whom I am still profoundly thankful and professionally indebted.”
Students’ Testimonials
“I was one of the early biomedical engineers. People did not know what that was at the time.”
[In 1994 he received the IEEE Edison Medal for fundamental contributions to applied biomedical instrumentation and the understanding of the electrical properties of the cardiovascular system].
Leslie Geddes EE PhD
“The field of bioengineering is in its infancy – it is the only engineering discipline that developed post WWII.
By the late 1960’s, the first biomedical engineering departments were formed at the University of Virginia, Case Western Reserve University, Johns Hopkins University, and Duke University.”
Navigate the circuit, AIMBE
“Ioan Pop de Popa MD PhD developed the first Romanian artificial heart and lung, one of the first four in the world in 1954.
He also introduced other devices: by-pass valvulotome, stereoscopic scialitic device, pulse duplicator, fatigue test device, and many others.”
Denton Cooley MD PhD
“The history of telemedicine […] goes further back [1874], when the newly constructed telegraph played an important telemedicine role not only in enabling care for a wounded person, but also in uniting a dying man with his wife 2000 kilometres away.
Innovation with the tools at hand has proven to be effective to bridge the tyranny of distance in the delivery of health care.”
Robert H. Eikelboom BE PhD
“The famous book of Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy by Sir Isaac Newton is considered one of the most important works in the history of science which marked the epoch of a great revolution in physics.
First published in 1687, it spread the light of mathematics on a science which up to then had remained in the darkness of conjectures and hypotheses.”
Wikipedia
“Leonardo da Vinci was a prolific hybrid innovator to unlock the secrets of human complexity for the first time in the history of mankind by amalgamating Science, Engineering and Biology [around 1494].
Therefore, we define him as The 1st Bioengineer of Humanity, […] to meet his desire for knowledge and promote his concept of interdisciplinarity.”
Ricardo Armentano BE PhD
“The heart is the perfection of the whole organism. Therefore the principles of the power of perception itself […] must lie in the heart.
And of course, the brain is not responsible for any of the sensations at all. [That is why] educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”
Aristotele, circa 300 B.C.
The genealogy [of biomedical engineering] dates from as far back as circa 3000 B.C. [Imothep, Egypt]. Since the earliest practicing engineer and the earliest practicing physician in recorded history were the same person, one might imagine that only a short time would elapse before engineering and medicine would merge to give rise to Biomedical Engineering
As it happens, [almost five millennia] had to pass before such disciplinary fusion would occur. Organized discussions on the founding of the new discipline of biomedical engineering must have taken place as early as 1947, as suggested by the first published Digest (book of abstracts) of the Annual Conference on Engineering in Medicine and Biology held in Chicago, IL, in 1962.
Joel L Cuello BE PhD