Barry K. Gilbert is a Staff Scientist and Professor in the Department of Physiology of the Mayo Foundation, Rochester, MN, and Director of the Special-Purpose Processor Development Group at Mayo. His research interests include: the development of algorithms for the analysis of wide bandwidth image and signal data; the design of specialized signal-processing computers to execute these tasks; and the advancement of high performance integrated circuit technologies that can be used to assemble very high performance signal processors.

Dr. Gilbert is also heavily committed to and involved in the transfer of electronics technologies from the Defense-Aerospace-Computer communities, where they are developed, to the health care industry, where they are needed to assure the provision of quality medical care to patients under conditions of dwindling national financial resources. Ongoing projects in which Dr. Gilbert's group is collaborating with physicians and biomedical researchers include: the electronic instrumentation of vascular stents to measure flow and pressure; techniques for measurement of healing of broken bones; the harvesting of electrical energy from combat soldiers' boots during routine walking activities; and the investigation of new ultra low power integrated circuit technologies for implantables such as pacemakers and defibrillators.