Introduction to the proposal submitted for establishment of the Joint UCB/UCSF Graduate Group in Bioengineering
Bioengineering: Two disciplines between disciplines
Perhaps more than in any other field, the apprentice practitioners in engineering are trained to deal logically and effectively with complexity. While learning to design complicated structures such as buildings or bridges, the apprentice structural engineer must be taught to deal logically and effectively with myriad simultaneous interactions of stresses and strains among the beams and other elements of a structure. Similarly, apprentice hydraulic engineers must learn to deal with interactions of pressures and flows in huge networks of pipes, channels, pumps and reservoirs; the apprentice mechanical engineer must learn to deal with the interactions of forces and motions in all manner of extremely complicated machinery; the apprentice industrial engineer must learn to deal with the enormously complicated logistic and other interactions within and among industrial plants; and the electrical emgineer must learn to deal with the interactions of signals and devices in large-scale electronic equipment. By necessity, engineers have developed and honed intellectual tools specifically aimed at understanding complicated systems and at dealing with them quantitatively and with reasonable rigor. While the rigor demanded of the physicist made the multibody problem all but intractable until the advent of high-performance digital computers, the practicality demanded of the engineer forced him or her to deal effectively with multibody problems on a daily basis, long before digital computers were available at all. Indeed, dealing with such problems is the tradition of engineering.
Another tradition in engineering has been an abiding interest among engineers in the complexity of the living world. What insights could the intellectual tools of engineering provide concerning the myriad interactions of stresses and strains, pressures and flows, logistic processes, and complicated mechanical and electrical phenomena that one sees everywhere in biological systems? We now know that the insights may be profound indeed-- as those given us by Bekesy regarding the ear and those given us by Hodgkin regarding the transmission of the nerve impulse. We also know now that the engineer simply does not come to the biological sciences with a panacea for all their complexity problems. The futile but extraordinarily expensive attempts in the late 1960s to bring engineering systems analysis to bear on large ecosystems provide ample evidence against the proposition that combining engineers untrained in biology with biologists untrained in engineering will lead to a profitable enterprise. Experience teaches us that productivity arises at this interface through individuals well-trained in both disciplines-- facile with the concepts and analytical tools of engineering, thoroughly familiar with the variability and complexity of living systems, conversant with the central issues of biological science, and totally immersed in biological problems of their own choices. Whether they are applying the topological methods of modern network theory to the nonequilibrium thermodynamic processes of the cell, the concepts of modern control theory to the physiological processes of the body, or the theories of hydraulic systems to the cochlea or the aorta, such individuals define one of the two major disciplines within Bioengineering.
The other discipline is the natural product of the interface between the practical arm of the biological sciences and the practical arm of the physical and mathematical sciences. It is a thoroughly practical discipline, aimed at application rather than fundamental understanding; and it often is labelled Medical Engineering to distinguish it from its basic-research-oriented counterpart in Bioengineering. The goal of this discipline is to bring the practical tools of engineering, especially modern computing, engineering instrumentation, and mechanical design to problems related to health and health care. The products of this discipline have been momentous-- advances such as bionic limbs, tomography, and computer-aided diagnosis. Experience teaches us that this is a discipline in which collaboration between individuals trained predominantly in the mother disciplines (medicine or engineering) can be productive; but that productivity is enhanced when the training has overlapped sufficiently to allow interchange of technical details as well as general concepts. Indeed, the most effective engineer in such collaboration is one especially trained for the task. The most effective medical instrumentation engineer, for example, is one with thorough knowledge of the biophysical sources of physiological signals, the physics and chemistry of the transducers conventionally used to detect those signals, the special electronic circuits required for the transducers, and the computer algorithms available for processing the signals.
During its more than fifteen years of existence, the Bioengineering Program at Berkeley has trained candidates for each of the two bioengineering disciplines; we expect the proposed two-campus Bioengineering Group will do the same. Clearly, the appropriate curriculum of courses for a graduate student in bioengineering depends very much on his/her career goals. A student intent on an academic career and research involving the application of systems analysis to the neuromuscular control of eye movement, for example, probably would have few courses in common with a student intent on a career in an industrial or hospital environment, designing instrumentation for cardiac intensive care. There are, however, certain courses that one would expect every professional bioengineer to have taken:
Having mastered these courses, the professional bioengineer would be expected to have undertaken an intensive curriculum of upper-division or graduate-level courses in those areas of biology and engineering most closely related to his/her career goals. The curriculum very often would include also upper-division or graduate-level courses in mathematics, chemistry, and/or physics. Within these guidelines, curricula for students in the proposed two-campus Bioengineering Group will be developed carefully on an individual basis. Included in each curriculum will be several of the courses already available on the two campuses and designed especially to bridge the interface between the mother disciplines.
Introductory Calculus
Linear Algebra
Differential Equations
General Biology (at least one year)
General Chemistry (at least one year)
General Physics
Organic Chemistry (at least one semester)
Computer Programmimg (at least one semester)
In addition, most professional bioengineers would be expected to have taken the following courses:
Cellular Physiology (one semester)
Mammalian Physiology
Biochemistry (at least one semester)
Advanced Computing (at least one semester)