Tanner Filben

Tanner Filben, from Glen Dale, will graduate with a degree in biomedical engineering and a minor in computer science. He is the assistant executive director of the Mountaineer Maniacs, a member of the Biomedical Engineering Society, and a former intern to the director for athletics of the Student Government Association.

Filben has maintained a 4.0 while traveling abroad, engaging in research, serving as a tutor in biology, and participating in a host of service projects on campus and in the community. He is also a two-time qualifier for the Boston Marathon.

In 2015, he had the opportunity to travel abroad to Rome to study Italian culture and environmental sustainability; and as a sophomore, he began immersing himself in undergraduate research. He is specifically interested in the biomechanics of injuries. 

From 2016-17, he served as an undergraduate researcher at the WVU Neural Engineering Laboratory where he developed a virtual reality program to teach patients how to walk again following a stroke or other neuromuscular trauma. 

Following his research at the NEL, he spent his summer as a research intern at the Wake Forest School of Medicine Center for Injury Biomechanics where he worked on enhancing a computerized brain model used for the study and prediction of traumatic brain injury.

He was also selected by faculty as the chief engineer to lead a team of five students for his senior design capstone. His project focuses on the development of a machine learning algorithm hat can identify autism spectrum disorder based on eye movements. 

Filben was also selected by faculty to lead the WVU Biomedical Engineering Society’s e-NABLE prosthetics project to oversee the creation of 3D printed hands that will be distributed throughout West Virginia free of charge to those in need of upper-limb devices. 

He is a 2017 Mr. Mountaineer finalist, a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society, and a recipient of the Bucklew Scholarship, among numerous other scholarships. 

After graduation, he plans to pursue a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering at the Virginia Tech – Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences.