Profiles

Gail Baura, PhD

About

Dr. Baura received her BS Electrical Engineering degree from Loyola Marymount University, her MS Electrical Engineering and MS Biomedical Engineering degrees from Drexel University, and her PhD Bioengineering degree from the University of Washington. Between her graduate degrees, she worked as a loop transmission systems engineer at AT&T Bell Laboratories. She then spent 13 years in the medical device industry conducting medical device research and managing research and product development at several companies. She holds 20 U.S. patents for patient monitoring technologies. In her last industry position, Dr. Baura was Vice President, Research and Chief Scientist at CardioDynamics. In 2006, she returned to academia as a Professor of Medical Devices at Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences, which is one of the Claremont Colleges. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Throughout her career, Dr. Baura has championed engineering curriculum excellence. She has written four engineering textbooks, three of which are medical device textbooks. The second edition of her Medical Device Technologies textbook was recently published by Elsevier. After finishing her five-year term as an ABET Engineering Accreditation Commissioner, Dr. Baura is now a Member of the ABET Board of Delegates. In her position as Director of Engineering at Loyola, she constructed a general engineering curriculum that incorporates substantial industry input and prepares new engineering graduates for positions in the medical device, microelectronics, and wastewater treatment industries.

Research Interests

Dr. Baura's research group is combatting educational inequities and health disparities.  She is collaborating with Dr. Matt Miller and Dr. Leanne Kallemeyn in the LUC School of Education to better understand how the new LUC Engineering program is able to recruit and retain female students (currently ranked #6 nationally in Percentage of Bachelor’s Degrees Awarded to Women), and how these program structures can be used by other engineering institutions to increase participation by underrepresented minorities.   Dr. Baura is also collaborating with Dr. Ann Lal in LUC Maternal Fetal Medicine to investigate and decrease Black pregnancy morbidity and mortality.   

Selected Publications

1. Baura, G., Medical Device Technologies: a Systems Based Overview Using Engineering Standards. ed. 2. Academic Press Series in Biomedical Engineering. 2021, San Diego, CA: Elsevier/Academic Press. xxxi, 620 p.

2. Neuman, M.R., Baura, G.D., Meldrum, S., Soykan, O., Valentinuzzi, M.E., Leder, R.S., Micera, S., and Zhang, Y.T., Advances in Medical Devices and Medical Electronics. Proceedings of the IEEE, 100th Anniversary Issue, May 13, 2012. 100:1537-1550.

3. Baura, G.D., Medical Device Technologies: a Systems Based Overview Using Engineering Standards. Academic Press Series in Biomedical Engineering. 2012, Waltham, MA: Elsevier/Academic Press. xv, 512 p.

4. Baura, G.D., Blink monitor for detecting blink occurrence in a living subject, U.S. Patent 7,639,146, 2009.

5. Baura, G. D., Malecha, J.R., and Bougerra, R., Method and apparatus for signal assessment including event rejection, U.S. Patent 7,570,989, 2009.

6. Baura, G.D., et al., Saturable Transport of Insulin from Plasma into the Central-Nervous-System of Dogs in-Vivo - a Mechanism for Regulated Insulin Delivery to the Brain. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 1993. 92(4):1824-1830