Va. Tech professor elected council chair of national institute

Jennifer S. Wayne has been elected Academic Council chair of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Virginia Tech announced Friday.

Based in Washington, D.C., AIMBE is a nonprofit composed of leaders in the medical and biological engineering fields and advocates for the value of those fields.

Wayne is the department head of Virginia Tech’s Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics Department. As chair of the Academic Council, Wayne will lead discussions and activities and work to increase visibility for the medical and biological engineering fields.

Wayne was elected to AIMBE’s College of Fellows in 2004 for her development of an approach to articular cartilage — that which covers joints like the hip, knee and elbow — biomechanics that included modeling and in vivo (in a living organism) repair.

Before going to Virginia Tech in 2019, Wayne led the Orthopaedic Research Laboratory at Virginia Commonwealth University for more than 25 years. Wayne’s research in musculoskeletal biomechanics focused on experimental, computation and theoretical models for the consequences of injury and the effectiveness of injury treatment methods and surgeries.

At VCU, Wayne taught courses on biomechanics, finite element analysis and various topics in physiology and anatomy. At Virginia Tech, she teaches an ethics and professional development course for biomedical engineering graduate students and a computer-aided design course for undergraduates.

In 2007, Wayne was recognized as an American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) fellow. She received the ASME H.R. Lissner Medal in 2019. In 2021, Wayne was elected fellow of the Orthopaedic Research Society.

Wayne graduated from Virginia Tech with a bachelor’s degree in engineering science and mechanics in 1983. She earned a master’s in biomedical engineering from Tulane University in 1984 and a doctorate in bioengineering from the University of California San Diego in 1990.