Bioengineering lies at the interfaces of biology,
the applied sciences and engineering. It combines the excitement
of multi-disciplinary research with the promise of making improvements
to society, especially in health care, e.g. in the diagnosis and
treatments of degenerative diseases. However, it is a relatively
new field that is still finding its way among the established engineering
and biological disciplines. As a multi-discipline it presents particular
problems for the seasoned researcher as much as for the new student:
indeed, we are all new students when it comes to subfields in which
we have not trained.
The 2007-2008 MBI Year in Mathematical Bioengineering will focus
around six workshops on Metabolic Engineering, Cell and Tissue Engineering,
Neuroengineering, Brain Imaging, and Neuromechanics, the latter
being covered in two linked workshops. Tutorials will be offered
to prepare participants, especially students and postdoctoral fellows
interested in entering the field. While omitting large areas, these
workshops provide examples of the central subject matter, and they
highlight two key modes of operation of bioengineering: as a conduit
for experimental methods, modeling and analytical tools from the
physical sciences and mathematics into biology, and as a conduit
for biological inspiration to the applied sciences and engineering,
as in bio-inspired design of new devices and materials.
A common feature of the topics chosen, and
indeed, of much of bioengineering, is their integrative nature.
Biological systems are unavoidable complex, often containing many
apparently redundant parts or pathways. In trying to understand,
predict, control, change, or build such a complex system one must
successfully reduce and combine a mass of detail. In this endeavor
mathematical modeling and analysis offers a unifying language and
set of principles that can draw together disparate ideas from genomics,
molecular biology, neuroscience, biochemistry, physiology, imaging
and signal processing (to name only topics germane to the six MBI
workshops). Mathematics can also reveal common principles operating
on different time and space scales, and guide the development of
computational algorithms for simulation and data analysis. |
 |
