Fifty Years of Biomedical Engineering: From Origin to Smart Technologies

In Italy, the Bioengineering Community was founded in 1980. The kick-off meeting was held in Montesicuro, a little village near Ancona and organized by Prof. Tommaso Leo from the then-named “Università degli Studi di Ancona” (now Università Politecnica delle Marche, UNIVPM) in cooperation with the nascent National Group of Bioengineering. This chapter aims to produce a brief review of the main results in Biomedical Engineering by UNIVPM during the first 50 years useful to understand the present and to track future contributions for the next 50 years. It is also an occasion to recall the pioneering work on the Bioengineering of the Neuromuscular, Cardiovascular and Metabolic systems performed by our leading colleagues Tommaso Leo, Paolo Mancini and Roberto Burattini, as well as to describe significant research achievements obtained by professors, researchers, post-doc fellows and PhD students who worked and/or are currently working at the UNVPM. Though mainly focusing on research findings in the above cited physiological systems, it is also worth mentioning in this chapter that UNIVPM has also an educational mission, provided by the two Biomedical Engineering courses currently active at the Engineering Faculty: the three-year Bachelor and the two-year Master (in English) courses.