With 17 U.S. patents to her credit and 16 years of industry experience in medical devices and telecommunications, including a variety of research and systems engineering positions, Baura ’84 decided to re-enter the academic world in 2006 as a professor at the Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences in Claremont, Calif.
“Teaching gives me the opportunity to pursue lines of research that interest me,” says Baura, whose research specialty is the application of system theory to patient monitoring and other devices. “I take physiologic signals and use mathematics to develop new diagnostic parameters for medical devices.”
Baura has written three textbooks, including “Engineering Ethics: An Industrial Perspective,” a practical, industry-based book on how ethics actually work in the real world. The book shows “how ethical problems and decisions can affect the entire professional careers of engineers, scientists and others involved with technology and industry,” according to Mechanical Engineering Magazine.
Currently working on her fourth textbook, Baura is also a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), an associate editor for IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine and the author of numerous articles.
“LMU laid the foundation for my career,” Baura says. “As time goes on, I realize that the education I got at LMU was as good as anywhere. You feel nurtured, and you know the professors. When my first book came out, I e-mailed my engineering professors to send them a copy, and they invited me out to lunch. This is 18 years after I graduated. At a big school, they would have said ‘Gail who?’”
After graduating from LMU, Baura received her master’s in biomedical engineering and electrical engineering from Drexel University, and her doctorate in bioengineering from the University of Washington.