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By David J. Craig
Boston University is acknowledged as a leader in biomedical engineering,
one of the most rapidly evolving areas of scientific research today.
At the College of Engineering, faculty members use cutting-edge engineering
techniques to understand how the body’s processes and structure,
from the level of individual genes to whole organs, relate to disease.
BU’s
leadership was underscored in 2001 when ENG received a five-year, $14
million Leadership Development Award from the Whitaker Foundation of
Arlington,
Va., to expand its programs in biomedical engineering. The prestigious award — BU
is only the third institution to receive a Leadership Development Award since
the Whitaker Foundation was founded in 1975 — was matched by the University
with $18 million, for a total commitment of $32 million in new research funding.
The
Whitaker grant supports education and research in three interdisciplinary areas:
cellular and subcellular bioengineering, which includes, for example,
the design of microengineered systems that can be implanted in the body to deliver
drugs; protein and genomics engineering, which explores how protein and gene
systems control cell function; and physiological systems dynamics, which involves
using computers to model and design new neurological and biomechanical systems.
A
primary focus of BU’s Whitaker Leadership Development Program is graduate
training — it features a core graduate curriculum that provides students
an engineering-based foundation in biology, physiology, computation, information
processing, and systems. The biomedical engineering department also is integrating
quantitative biology and physiology into several undergraduate courses as part
of the Whitaker award.
The grant funds a total of 12 new full-time faculty positions,
8 of which have
been filled. It also funds several first-year graduate fellowships, and eventually
will create more than 28,000 square feet of new laboratory and teaching space
at the Charles River Campus and the Medical Campus. Two laboratory spaces at
44 Cummington St., for cell and tissue engineering and computational modeling,
were renovated last year with part of the grant. (See
the related story about
BU’s new Life Science and Engineering Building)
“An unprecedented era of opportunity for biomedical science lies ahead,” says
ENG Professor Kenneth Lutchen, chairman of the biomedical engineering department, “and
the Whitaker grant enables our department to build the resources — both physical,
and in terms of personnel, by recruiting superb faculty — to achieve our vision
of where biomedical engineering should go in the future.” He points out
that his department, founded in 1966, was among the nation’s first in biomedical
engineering. “The grant is advancing our capacity to understand how life
works and how best to develop diagnostics and therapeutics that will improve
patient care.”
For more information, visit bme.bu.edu.
14
November 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations