Tim M. Bruns, Ph.D.
Faculty
NCRC - B10 - A-169
(734) 647-8727
Since 2013 I have been a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan. In 2019 I was granted tenure and promotion to Associate Professor. I am also a core faculty member of the Biointerfaces Institute and a faculty affiliate of the Neurosciences Graduate Program at U-M. My research group, the Peripheral Neural Engineering and Urodynamics Lab (pNEURO Lab), focuses on neural engineering and neuroscience, with specific applications in neural control over pelvic organs and collaborations on novel electrode interfaces.
I am from central Illinois, and obtained my B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in 2000 with a minor in Bioengineering. After graduation I spent a summer as an intern at Medtronic in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I then completed a M.S. in Bioengineering in 2001 at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, with a research thesis on recording neural signals during atrial defibrillation shocks. Next I worked for 3.5 years as an R&D Engineer at Baxter Healthcare in Round Lake, Illinois, northwest of Chicago, in the Transfusion Therapies division on the Alyx apheresis instrument. This division, also known as Fenwal, is now part of Fresenius Kabi. In 2005 I returned to academia, and completed my Ph.D. in 2009 in Biomedical Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, as part of the FES Center and Neural Engineering Center. My dissertation advisor was Ken Gustafson, and Narendra Bhadra was a collaborator. My dissertation was titled "Afferent stimulation for exciting reflex micturition circuits," and focused on preclinical experiments to drive bladder excitation and emptying. Finally, my training concluded as a postdoc. I worked Doug Weber at the University of Pittsburgh in his Rehab Neural Engineering Lab, focusing on interfaces with dorsal root ganglia for bladder and locomotion neuroprostheses. I was supported by an NIH F32 fellowship while I was a postdoc.
Faculty websites:
- Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
- Biointerfaces Institute core faculty
- Neuroscience Graduate Program faculty affiliate
- Michigan Research Experts page
Other websites: