GROUNDBREAKING COURSE IN PLASMA MEDICINE FUSES BIOLOGY AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING

"We think of you as a very special group of students," said Mounir Laroussi, professor of electrical engineering, in welcoming 38 Old Dominion students to a course - Biomedical Applications of Low Temperature Plasmas - that apparently is the first of its kind anywhere in the world.

At the initial class meeting, Laroussi stressed the groundbreaking significance of the course, which brings together seniors and graduate students from both biology and electrical engineering for fundamental instruction in the nascent field of plasma medicine. Laroussi said he has researched the issue and found no course similar to this one, which he and colleagues have been planning for more than a year.

Laroussi has been recognized for his international leadership in plasma medicine and is the director of the ODU Laser and Plasma Engineering Institute (LPEI). He is teaching the course with Wayne Hynes, a microbiologist who chairs the ODU Department of Biological Sciences, and Nazir Barekzi, a biologist and researcher with LPEI.

Plasma medicine is an emerging interdisciplinary field encompassing the technology of low-temperature plasmas and applications of the plasmas in wound healing, electrosurgery, cancer treatment and dentistry.

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