Ribbon-cutting Celebrates Baltimore Center Where Engineers, Doctors Team Up to Improve Health Outcomes

One of the most significant challenges in cancer treatment today is precisely targeting tumors while minimizing damage to healthy tissues. Although medicine has made great advances and improved outcomes for patients, many still experience significant side effects.

Huang-Chiao “Joe” Huang, a University of Maryland associate professor of bioengineering and Fischell Family Distinguished Professor, is working on a potential answer: photodynamic therapy (PDT), a treatment that uses light to selectively activate a photosensitive drug within tumors, avoiding toxicity in healthy tissues and improving patients’ quality of life.

His research is advancing toward clinical reality at the Edward and Jennifer St. John Center for Translational Engineering and Medicine (CTEM) in the University of Maryland BioPark in Baltimore, which celebrated its formal dedication with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sept. 8.

“We're developing drugs that remain largely inactive until they are exposed to a specific color of light,” said Huang, who attended. “They generate therapeutic effects that not only selectively destroy cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue, but also activate our body's immune system to help fight disease.”

Key to the research is Huang’s and other researcher’s work at CTEM is the ability to partner effortlessly with clinicians affiliated with the center who work across the street at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM).

“Our ability to walk into the operating room, observe how our collaborators perform surgery, and have real-time discussions about clinical challenges has been incredibly valuable,” said Huang. "Those interactions help us design technologies that fit seamlessly into existing clinical workflows and address unmet patient needs."

Located on the fourth floor of 4MLK, CTEM is an initiative fostering collaborations and face-to-face partnerships among researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), which houses UMSOM, and the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). The center, announced in 2025, is funded with a $10 million gift from Edward ’61 and Jennifer St. John and the Edward St. John Foundation, led by Sharon Akers ’78, along with a $12.75 million grant from the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State. 

Research conducted at CTEM focuses on a number of conditions, including cancer, macular-degeneration, glaucoma and vascular disease as well as on technologies such as AI and biomedical imaging. 

“As both of our institutions continue to leverage our expertise, knowledge and creativity to take on the grand challenges of our time, partnerships such as this will be incredibly critical to that success,” UMCP President Darryll J.Pines said at Tuesday’s ribbon-cutting. “We need collaborators and supporters such as Ed, Jennifer and Sharon to help us with their resources, but most importantly, with their passionate vision for what could be possible.” 

UMB President Bruce E. Jarrell described his decades-long dream for a place like CTEM, where engineers and physicians with complementary skill sets work side-by-side. “What's so remarkable is that the people in this center can solve problems that neither of us can solve as individual programs,” said Jarrell. 

CTEM’s goal is to bring research and outcomes from the bench to the bedside. “This is a vision to develop and accelerate breakthroughs that are needed by our patients today. This is also a vision to design new therapies and treatments to improve the doctor-patient experience, and the future of medicine,” said Clark School Dean Samuel Graham. “Those visions will come to reality right here at CTEM.”

The center is led by co-directors: Giuliano Scarcelli, professor and Fischell Institute fellow at the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at UMCP, and Osamah Saeedi, professor of ophthalmology and Glaucoma Division chief at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

UMSOM Dean Mark Gladwin pointed to the effectiveness of engineers and physicians working together and with students to move research forward and achieve results that transform lives. 

“Dr. Saeedi and Dr. Scarcelli have an extraordinary research partnership where they are using the most advanced technology to image the biomechanics of the eye,” Gladwin said. “They’re trying to develop new diagnoses and risk stratification for glaucoma, one of the major threats to human vision. They’re now recruiting and mentoring new faculty to develop new imaging for macular degeneration, the leading cause of age-related blindness.These are just a few examples of the kind of work and economic impact that this Center will have.”