Bruce Wheeler moved to the University of California at San Diego in 2015 as an Adjunct Professor of Bioengineering with duties principally aimed at supporting the new Systems Bioengineering major at UCSD. He served 7 years at the University of Florida and 28 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At Illinois he wrote the successful proposal for the BS, MS, PHD and Department of Bioengineering and served as Director and then Founding and Interim Head (2003-8). He was also a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and of the Beckman Institute; he served as Chair of the Neuroscience Program and as Associate Head for Undergraduate Affairs of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He served as Acting Chair of the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering (2009-12) where he co-authored the proposal for the BS BME degree.
He served as President of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, strongly advocating for Biomedical and Health Informatics as the fastest growing component of biomedical engineering. Previously (2007-12) he was Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. He has just been elected to become VP Finance for EMBS.
Prof. Wheeler’s research interests lie in the application of electrical engineering methodologies to neuroscience. His work influenced the development of neural spike sorting technologies, demonstrated that microelectrode array recording from brain slices was possible and productive, and has been a leader in the development of lithography to control cells, especially neurons, in culture. This work aims at basic science understanding of the behavior of small populations of neurons, in hopes of creating better insight into the functioning of the brain.
He is a Fellow of AAAS, IEEE, BMES, AIME, and IAMBE. He is likely the only person to start two undergraduate BME degree programs, as well as to participate in the implementation of a third. He is Emeritus Professor at Illinois and Florida.