Senior Lecturer Terry Layton retires after 24 years at UIC
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This May will be 50 years for Terry N. Layton as a biomedical engineer and 24 years in the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering as a senior lecturer. After those five decades in the field and many years of passing knowledge to the next generation of biomedical engineers, he is retiring this spring.
Layton first came to UIC for a faculty assignment after being a judge at the annual Senior Design Expo and being invited to give a seminar about technology assessment and how to start a medical device company in 2001.
“I did the seminar, and the room was packed,” Layton said. “It was not only filled with students, but doctors from the medical campus of UIC and inventors and entrepreneurs.”
After giving such a successful seminar, Layton was invited by former department head Richard Magin to turn his seminar into a class. From then on, Layton taught this class once a week and eventually began teaching more.
“After a couple of semesters of teaching this class and seeing the interest of the students and how they liked it, Doctor Magin asked me if I could come up with more courses, and so I did and also ended up teaching senior design,” Layton said. “I ended up coming up with a total of six courses—including Bio-entrepreneurship which were later classified as skill sets for industry. Through that course, I taught students about what biomedical engineers do in industry, including how they grow in product development, product compliance, or regulatory for new products.”
Layton added that Magin had the vision to start and build the entrepreneur and medical device skill set classes, and both the former department head and current department head, Tom Royston, supported the expansion of the classes which allowed him to continue the great opportunity to pass on his knowledge and share his stories to future bioengineers and biomedical engineers.
According to Royston, “Terry has enriched the educational experience of more than a thousand of our students over the past quarter century, and we wish him the best in retirement. He will be missed. We’ll do our best to carry on his legacy of excellence in the courses he developed and taught. Indeed, several of our current faculty were former students of Terry’s. So, they learned from the best.”
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At one point, during his time at UIC, Layton took over teaching senior design from former biomedical engineering professor Bert Zuber.
Layton received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wyoming, entered the military, and eventually came to UIC for his master’s in bioengineering where his thesis explored cardiovascular research at Rush University Medical Center. When Layton was enrolled at UIC, the biomedical engineering (formerly bioengineering) program did not have a PhD program, that is until his last semester. He then pursued his PhD in biomedical engineering at the University of Virginia.
After graduating, Layton joined Kendall Healthcare, a medical equipment manufacturing company, as part of a research team of 140 people working on medical device product development. Kendall Healthcare eventually relocated its headquarters to Boston, and Layton separated from the company and joined Baxter International, another medical device innovation company, for a bit before licensing a product from Kendall and selling the product to urologists throughout the U.S.
Throughout his career, Layton developed and created 18 patents. He also received the 2011 UIC Silver Circle Excellence in Teaching Award and several other teaching awards. In total, Layton taught 49 semesters at UIC.
He added that he thoroughly enjoyed teaching at UIC and passing on his industry experience. He also found teaching and being involved with senior design very rewarding. In fact, Layton said that he still stays in touch with many former students.
In his retirement, he plans to keep in touch with medical device companies in a mentorship capacity and spend time playing pickleball.
He also added that he is very grateful for the help and guidance he’s received throughout the years, especially from Luk Zientara and Susan Lee, who were helpful with administrative and computer issues.