Robert "Bob" Nerem: Renowned Scientist, Founding Director of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience
Summer 2020 | by Alumni Publications
Bob M. Nerem, HON 14, of Stone Mountain, Ga., on Mar. 6. Nerem often said, “Research, like life, is a people business,” and he spent most of his 56-year academic career proving the point. Nerem would enthusiastically strike up a conversation with the undergrad or the fellow bioengineer or the restaurant waiter, asking questions, connecting on a personal level. An internationally renowned pioneer in bioengineering and biomedical research and education, Nerem’s most memorable trait was probably his sincere affability.
“Bob always had time to talk to anyone, always had a kind word, a funny story or witty remark—he positively influenced thousands in our community by showing that he genuinely cared about everyone,” said Andrés García, executive director of the
Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech, remembering Nerem, the founding director of the Petit Institute.
It usually didn’t matter if a new hire was part of the research enterprise or a supporting player—for years, fresh employees at the Petit Institute would receive a copy of Nerem’s “Rules of Life: The Planet Earth School” (often from Nerem himself). These were 15 maxims he’d gathered, some very familiar, some conjured by Nerem from piecemeal sources, or from his own imagination.
Nerem spent the past 33 years at Georgia Tech, including 15 years (1995 to 2009) as the founding director of the Petit Institute. He began his career at Ohio State University (where he earned his PhD in mechanical engineering in 1964), in the Department of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering. But before long, he was focusing on the effects of launch vibrations on astronaut physiology, “which opened the window on a whole new world, that of biology and medicine,” Nerem said at the National Academy of Engineering.
Though he continued teaching aerospace engineering, he started applying his engineering knowledge to studying blood flow and its role in disease processes—his entry into the world of interdisciplinary research and biomedical engineering. Eventually he delved into cell biology, molecular biology, tissue engineering, and stem cell technology.
“Bob was, in many ways, one of the fathers of tissue engineering,” noted Barbara Boyan, dean of the College of Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University.
As part of the core group of bioengineering/biomedical engineering forerunners at Georgia Tech (along with Ajit Yoganathan, Don Giddens, and others), Nerem established an interdisciplinary culture at the Petit Institute.
Mike Johns, who arrived at Emory University to lead the Robert W. Woodruff Health Sciences Center, was already familiar with Nerem and said he was the go-to guy when discussions began for a new biomedical engineering department that would link public Georgia Tech and private Emory.
Twenty years later, the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University is a rare public education–private education entity, and is ranked among the top BME departments in the nation.
Nerem’s interest in leveling the field for everyone resulted in creation of the program that he was proudest of later in his career—Project ENGAGES, a high school education program for underrepresented minority students.
Nerem is survived by his wife of more than 40 years, Marilyn; his children, Steven Nerem and Nancy Nerem Black; Marilyn’s children, Christy Maser and Carol Wilcox; and multiple grandchildren. —Jerry Grillo