Engineering is the art, science, technology and practice of solving problems under constraints. These constraints are particularly evident at the intersection of biology and medicine because of the human body’s unique complexities. Recent developments in our quantitative understanding of the structure of living systems have lessened these constraints, creating an unprecedented opportunity for engineers to make an impact on human health, the quality of our food supply, the availability of alternative energy sources and, ultimately, on our national economic competitiveness.

In medicine, we will soon see low-cost engineering devices that can acquire detailed information about a patient’s genetic makeup and response to environmental stressors such as infection or inflammation. This information will be analyzed using state-of-the-art, secure information systems coupled with complex, multiscale engineering models of disease processes — involving biochemical transport, mechanical interactions among cells, and electrical activation of thousands of units in precise arrangements. The analysis will be used to prescribe individualized medical treatments, thus decreasing side effects and reducing health care costs.

In other bio-based engineering arenas, we can envision vast new energy sources being derived from biological materials through inventive biochemical engineering and catalytic strategies, perhaps growing blue cotton for our blue jeans to make consumer lifestyles more environmentally sustainable, producing high-performance engineering polymers with nanoscale structure sustainably at low temperature and pressure and ensuring clean water supplies for our grandchildren via environmental engineering.

Achieving advances like these will require active contributions from all engineering disciplines, as well as from the sciences, arts, commerce, business and social sciences. This is the role of universities. Throughout history, universities have served as a focal point for innovation by bringing together those who discover new knowledge and those who see opportunity in applying it. U.Va.’s effort to grow new activities linking “Engineering in Medicine” is a laudable example. This initiative is one part application of technologies to emerging medical problems, one part application of applied science to help advance understanding of disease and injury, and one part invention of entirely new and disruptive therapies. All three parts are critical to leadership in this field.

How can we prepare the SEAS student of tomorrow for these exciting challenges?

For the student, this means growing as a person to develop the habit of personal initiative and the ability to make judgments in the face of uncertainty. More broadly, we believe that the creative arts and social sciences can help inform novel solutions to biomedical problems, and we seek ways to create interfaces for students at these boundaries of human creativity. Again, U.Va. Engineering already has a lead in this arena via efforts such as the exciting “Engineering in Context” program. In our biomedical engineering (BME) major, we integrate contextual problem formulation, design and discovery throughout all three years of the undergraduate experience.

The Engineering School is approaching this vision for BME from a number of perspectives. With funding from the National Science Foundation, we have created a collaborative network — BME Planet — that currently includes 20 other universities and 25 corporations across 18 nations on six continents. We will pursue “globally distributed design” experiences for our students. This network will make it possible for students from U.Va. to take a summer internship developing a new medical device with a high-tech firm in Milan, or for researchers at U.Va. to find collaborators in Singapore. It will enable collaboration among groups that had previously operated in isolation, making the pursuit of innovation more efficient and productive.

The work we’ve done as part of the $4.5 million Translational Research Partnership Award we received from the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation complements this effort. At the heart of our Coulter initiative is a concept we call “upstream innovation,” the idea that early interaction among all the parties that play a role in the commercialization of a technology — patent attorneys, physicians, venture capitalists, market analysts, as well as university scientists and engineers — can have a positive impact on innovation.

The U.Va. plan for the Future of the University cites biomedical engineering as a University-wide strength to be sustained. This field is too important for any single department alone, and it is clear that engineers in every subfield have major insights and talents to bring to the bright new world of “bioengineering.” The emergence of a global bioengineering community — involving engineers of all types — will enhance our ability to make a difference for human health.

What do you think? To respond to Reflections, send an e-mail to vef-info@virginia.edu.