Joseph Tranquillo, Ph.D. (`97)
Joe Tranquillo is the Associate Provost for Transformative Teaching and Learning and a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Bucknell University. He was the first direct hire in a new biomedical engineering program, which has since grown to 6 faculty, ~100 students, and has been ranked five times in a row as the number one undergraduate biomedical engineering program by US News and World Report. Joe previously served as the Director of the Teaching and Learning Center and co-director of the Institute for Leadership in Technology and Management and co-founded the Bucknell Innovation Group and KEEN Winter Interdisciplinary Design Experience. Off campus, Joe is an ASEE Fellow, AIMBE Fellow, BMES Fellow, National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Education Fellow, Senior Member of IEEE, NSF Pathways to Innovation Faculty Fellow, past chair of the ASEE Biomedical Engineering Division, co-editor of the Morgan and Claypool Biomedical Engineering Book Series, Media Director for BigBeacon and serves on several national and international boards. He has been recognized with awards including the National Biomedical Engineering Teaching Award, ASEE Theo Pilkington Outstanding Educator, and has been nominated twice for the CASE US Professor of the Year. Joe has delivered over 100 intensive teaching workshops, including in Peru, Finland, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, United Kingdom and Columbia. Joe is the author of five books and over 200 articles and conference proceedings. His work, conducted exclusively with undergraduates, has been feature on the Discovery Channel, TEDx, Gates Foundation, Google, LinkedIn, and CNN Health. He has received ~$3M in funded from NASA, NIH, NSF, Kern Family Foundation, VentureWell, Degenstein Foundation, and the US Department of Defense. Joe is an affiliate faculty member of Cornell University an international faculty member at Universidad Catolica de Chile, and was a visiting scholar at Stanford University and the University of Utah.
The above is the boring version of my biography, this is the real version. I am a dad to two wonderful children (Laura and Paul) with my wife (Lisa). I have a “man kitchen” in my basement where I enjoy making sausage, brewing Belgian beers, and making pasta. To stay health, despite the eating and drinking, I have turned to trail running, sometimes pushing my body a bit beyond what might be considered prudent – I have finished several ultra-marathons. I own a small business. I am a first generation Italian-American who loves to travel. But perhaps my defining feature is that I have always been an improviser. I was accepted to the Berklee School of Music for Jazz and decided not to attend. I then discovered dance and movement in college, and over the past 25 years have studied Contact Improvisation, Aikido, Capoeira, Yoga, Boxing and Feldenkrais Method. When I arrived at Bucknell I co-founder the Bucknell Improvisation Intensive Ensemble that has performed with internationally known artists. I have been a regularly performer with the Bucknell Dance Company, ElectroAcoustic Ensemble and have collaborated outside of Bucknell with the Techtonic Theater Company, Capacitor Dance Company, Chocolate Heads Movement Band and Bloomsburg Theater Ensemble. These passions feed me and I could not have done any of the things in the preceding boring paragraph without them!
