Gerard L. Coté, professor and head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, has been named director of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station's Center for Remote Healthcare Technology (CRHT), announced Dr. M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of Texas A&M Engineering.
CRHT, which was established in 2013, has a vision of enabling healthy living by shifting the landscape from disease management to disease prevention. The center’s mission is to identify and overcome the unmet patient and health care provider needs through development of breakthrough health care devices, technologies and information systems.
Towards this goal, the center serves as a focal point to facilitate significant advances in the remote health care field through next-generation wireless & remote medical information systems, translational research in biomedical devices, and development of innovative algorithms and test and measurement systems.
Researchers at the center are not only developing innovative prototype and information systems but also engaging state and federal and regulatory agencies, the medical community, and the medical device industry in an effort to further the design, development, testing and deployment of those systems.
Coté, who joined Texas A&M in 1991, is holder of the Charles H. and Bettye Barclay Professorship in Engineering. In addition, he holds the rank of Fellow in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the International Society for Optics and Photonics, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.
Coté’s primary research interests include the use of optics for medical diagnostics and biomedical sensing. Within the Department of Biomedical Engineering, he directs the Optical Biosensing Laboratory, which focuses on the design, development, theoretical modeling and analysis of optical sensors for biomedical measurements. He also is founder of three Houston-based medical device companies, BioTex, Inc., Visualase, Inc., and Base Pair Biotechnologies
A recipient of numerous awards throughout his career for teaching and research, Coté’s honors include receiving the Mary Jane Kugel Award from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International; the Association of Former Students (AFS) Faculty Distinguished Achievement Award in Teaching; and the AFS Distinguished Achievement Award for Research.
Coté completed his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology and earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Connecticut.