A Wake-Up Call for the Engineering and Biomedical Science Communities

By: Jie Chen, Stephen Wong, Joseph Chang, Pau-Choo Chung, Huai Li, Ut-Va Koc, Fred W. Prior, and Robert Newcomb

Today, only a very small portion of engineers are actively engaged in biomedical research. Of these, only a rare few are funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This dearth owes perhaps to fundamental differences between engineering and biomedical research: the engineering disciplines are highly mathematical and technical, whereas biomedical research is less mathematical and more problem driven. Each field is faced with unique challenges. The biomedical community lacks critical techniques and suitable tools to deal with enormous heterogeneous, multi-scale data coming out of high throughput devices that threaten to overwhelm them. Meanwhile, the engineering community continues to refine their considerable modeling and analysis techniques on various ‘toy’ problems, and worrying about a lack of real-world, life-science applications. If the two fields were to interconnect, their respective strengths would go a long way to remedying many current problems. The question that arises is how to begin engaging the broader engineering communities worldwide in solving complex disease problems and increase the productivity of scientific discoveries.

This article provides an overview of our recent workshop on “Biomarker Development and Application,” was a direct result of the NIH roadmap. This workshop, the third in the series, was held in the Lister Hill Auditorium on the NIH campus, and saw the attendance of over 150 engineers and biomedical scientists representing the science and engineering community, industries, and government agencies worldwide.

Critical issues for interdisciplinary collaboration between the engineering and biomedical domains include the availability of data and the ability to communicate across domains. Both barriers could be overcome by the development of seed grants for early stage collaboration. Similarly, a greater emphasis on joint funding opportunities between NIH and other more engineering- friendly funding agencies, such as NSF, DOE and DOD, would help to emphasize the need for multi-disciplinary interactions.

Scientific research and medical practice changes with the arrival of new technology, with examples spread throughout history: the arrival of antibiotics in combating infectious disease, the development of the fields of microbiology, and the proactivity of pathology with the advent of microscopy, the creation of radiology with the discovery of X-rays, the birth of the vast biotech industry following the development of recombinant DNA; and the list goes on and on. Now with the advent of genomics, proteomics, many other ‘-omics’, molecular imaging, nanotechnology, and fast computers, we stand at the threshold of another golden era of biological discovery and progress. However the specializations and creation of silos in the traditional engineering and biomedical science disciplines stand as obstacles to the advance of biomedical research and human. Fundamental changes in conducting crossdisciplinary research are required if we are to step forward – cutting down ‘silos’ and breaking down walls of traditional scientific boundaries, and embracing ‘team work’ or ‘team science,’ concepts that are so alien to traditional academic communities. If the engineering and biomedical science communities refuse to see the need for change, this golden era of biological discovery may never come.

To find more about this topic, view the complete article in the IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine, Winter Quarter 2009, issue.