Walt Baxter

BMES Fellow and Distinguished Scientist, Medtronic Cardiac Rhythm Management 

Some biomedical engineering innovations strap to your wrist or sit in your medicine cabinet. The ones Walt Baxter works on go inside your body and stay there for 15 or 20 years. 

The pacemaker is decades old at this point, but it's still remarkable — materials science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and advanced algorithms all miniaturized into something that fits under the skin. Hundreds of thousands are implanted every year. "Patients feel amazing after they receive their device," Baxter says. "Their energy is back."  

Most of them stop thinking about their heart condition entirely. That's the point. 

Other medical devices restore health in the same way. A closed-loop insulin pump for type 1 diabetics pairs a glucose sensor with a pump trained on millions 

For families, it means going from checking a child's blood sugar five times a day — terrified of a dangerous high or low in the middle of the night — to a system that largely manages itself. "It lets patients live a fuller life," Baxter says, "and start to think about their lives in different ways." 

Behind every one of these devices is an engineer most people will never meet. "Every pacemaker that rolls off a manufacturing line has to be sterile, reliable, and ready to treat you for the life of the device."