The science of biology is becoming an ever more important presence at the Institute, as elucidation of molecular underpinnings stimulates increasingly productive interactions with physical, chemical, and mathematical approaches. Not surprisingly, then, research activities at the biology/engineering interface have flourished for more than a decade. Because of its exceptional excellence in engineering, biology, and toxicology MIT holds a leading position world-wide with respect to bioengineering and biotechnology research conducted by its faculty. Formation of administrative structures to coordinate inter-departmental research initiatives has traditionally been easy for the Institute, and the biology/engineering interface is no exception. As examples, the Center for Environmental Health Sciences was initiated in 1978, the Biotechnology Process Engineering Center was established in 1984 and the Center for Biomedical Engineering was formed in 1995, all with a minimum of complication. At the same time, student interest in bioengineering education opportunities, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, has similarly soared in recent years. But formation of an administrative structure for education at disciplinary interfaces requires more careful consideration. Essentially, it requires defining the intellectual framework for an emerging new discipline, and the process must involve participation by and discussion among faculty from the relevant contributing disciplines. Precisely this sort of process has, in fact, been proceeding at MIT for the past several years, and has culminated with the creation within the School of Engineering of a new educational entity to carry out educational curricula combining engineering and biology: The Division of Bioengineering & Environmental Health [BEH]. The name of this Division, as will be elaborated below, signifies the breadth of applications arising from marrying engineering and biology at a fundamental level, including technologies affecting human health from both medical and environmental perspectives as well as biology-based technologies unrelated to human health. The purpose of this article is to describe the structure of the Division, the intellectual motivation for forming the Division, and the process involved in the Division's establishment.

What Is The Division?

Many of the faculty involved with the discussions which led to formation of the Division feel an acute need for formal recognition of an ever-increasing load of teaching and administrative effort devoted to bioengineering efforts which cross department boundaries [see "A Modest Proposal for Biomedical Engineering Education," MIT Faculty Newsletter, Vol. IX No. 2, Oct/Nov 1996]. They believe that bioengineering and environmental health have evolved to the point of needing a stand-alone faculty unit, which may eventually evolve into a full department at MIT. They agree that biology must be brought into contact with traditional engineering disciplines broadly, and yet in turn be continually informed by ongoing advances in the traditional disciplines. Engineering Dean Robert Brown thus proposed formation of a "Division" within SoE, possessing department-level status, attributes, and prerogatives but which is joined in matrix fashion with the departments themselves. He further proposed that the existing Division of Toxicology be moved from the Whitaker College to join Bioengineering to further strengthen both the applied science foundation and the base of applied problems. This structure captured the philosophical vision of the faculty currently involved in teaching and advising in bioengineering and it was thus approved by the MIT Corporation to begin on 1 July 1998.

The Division of Bioengineering & Environmental Health will be composed primarily of what are termed "2-Key" faculty, i.e., faculty who will commit their time and efforts roughly equally between a core Department and this Division. In most cases, this will be characterized by a formal 50%/50% split of responsibility for a faculty member’s academic salary, teaching duties, and administrative responsibilities. In some others, which should be a minority as the Division progresses, there may be formal 100% responsibility for a faculty member’s academic salary by a Department (or the Division) but the level of teaching duties and administrative responsibilities committed toward Division goals will be expected to be similarly substantial.

In the initial start-up phase, these faculty will come by partial transfer from School of Engineering or Science Departments or by full transfer from the currently-existing Division of Toxicology (which will merge with BEH). New faculty can be hired into the Division in "2-Key" manner with Departments mutually interested in the individual’s research area and capabilities, with responsibility for promotion and tenure decisions again equally shared. The Division Director (or Co-Directors during the beginning period, reflecting the merging of bioengineering and toxicology faculties) serves as a Department Head on the School of Engineering Council. Schematically, this interrelationship between the Division and the School of Engineering Departments can be depicted like this.

The arrangement for faculty from the School of Science, and possibly Whitaker College, requires connection outside the School of Engineering, and so will be accomplished in an individual manner for now.

We plan to start with on the order of 20 faculty in BEH, with intention of growing to a size of 30-40 within the coming decade. Examples of research program areas currently directed by faculty anticipated to join the Division at the initial opportunity include molecular design of therapeutics and biomaterials; modeling and measurement of bio-molecular, cellular, and tissue structure, properties, and function; dynamics and control of physiological systems; cell culture biotechnology and tissue engineering; computational biology; drug, toxin, and carcinogen transport, metabolism, and mechanisms of action; primary causes of genetic changes; pathogen transmission, infection, and monitoring. Building on these areas, exciting additional opportunities beckon faculty working at this engineering/biology interface, including computational biology and functional genomics (i.e., physiological phenotypic correlates for genome-based analysis); environmental genomics (i.e., physiological phenotypic correlates for gene-environment interactions); biological synthesis of new materials for non-medical applications; biomolecular motors and machines; in vitro surrogate toxicology and pharmacology; micro- and nano-biotechnologies; and biochemical microscopies. Some of this research, though certainly not all, is fostered through the Center for Biomedical Engineering, the Biotechnology Process Engineering Center, and the Center for Environmental Health Science.

Degree programs are planned at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, with emphasis on developing a new core curriculum combining engineering and biology while maintaining strong connection to a core discipline. At the undergraduate level, a BS Minor degree program in Biomedical Engineering currently exists (administered by the Center for Biomedical Engineering before the creation of BEH) and an analogous minor in Environmental Health is being implemented. Some commonalty in certain aspects of the core coursework between these two degree programs is anticipated. Five-year BS/MS degree programs, in which a student would obtain a BS degree in a traditional discipline and an MS degree in Bioengineering or Toxicology, are also envisioned. We do not expect a Bachelor of Science major degree to be offered by the Division, until and unless there is sufficient core disciplinary material at the undergraduate level to warrant such programs. Based on current assessment of student interest, we can anticipate that these Division undergraduate degree programs may grow to a combined enrollment of more than 100 students/class.

At the graduate level, a Ph.D. degree program in Toxicology currently exists, and an analogous one in Bioengineering is being planned for a fall 1999 start. As with the undergraduate degree programs, there should be some commonalty in certain aspects of the core coursework. Our initial conception is that students will enter into a core set of Bioengineering and/or Environmental Health courses that combine engineering analysis and synthesis approaches with central aspects of molecular and cellular biology and physiology, preparing for a dedicated doctoral qualifying examination. In addition, each student would be required to complete a graduate minor in a core Departmental discipline, for depth in a particular field of traditional study. Thesis research would, of course, be conducted under the supervision of faculty working at the engineering/biology interface. We anticipate that these Division graduate degree programs will grow to a combined enrollment of at least 30-40 students/year. Also at the graduate level, minors in Bioengineering and/or Environmental Health can be envisioned to formally incorporate training in this field within Ph.D. degree programs in other disciplines. These minors might involve another 20-30 students/year.

At both the undergraduate and graduate level, hands-on laboratory experience in experimentation and/or computation emphasizing quantitative measurement and modeling of biological systems in terms of fundamental physical and chemical processes will be emphasized in the curricula as well as in research projects.

Intellectual Motivation for the Division

The modern issues regarding education at the biology/engineering interface at MIT today are very similar to those MIT faced at the chemistry/engineering interface around the turn of the century. In the late 1800s, the field of chemistry underwent a dramatic shift -- chemists began to focus on the quantifiable aspects of chemical phenomena, and chemistry moved from a science of observation to one of prediction. At the same time, industrialization in the late 1800s created a demand for engineers with a knowledge of chemistry. Course X, Chemical Engineering, was initiated in 1888 as a Division in the Chemistry Department, and evolved as a discipline here as the new quantitative chemical sciences (physical chemistry and thermodynamics) along with the cutting edge engineering sciences were incorporated into the curriculum. Chemical Engineering finally became a separate Department in 1920, with a curriculum that defined the new discipline. MIT is recognized as the birthplace of chemical engineering.

The remarkable changes which occurred in chemistry in the late 1800s and the impact on engineering are paralleled in modern times by a similar revolution in biology. MIT has long played a leading role in translating biological advances into technological applications, essentially defining the field of biotechnology, profoundly influencing industries as diverse as pharmaceutics, agriculture, and synthetic chemistry. Now, the advent of molecular biology has provided the tools to undertake mechanistic investigations of the behavior of cells and higher organisms, and, like chemistry 100 years ago, biology is rapidly moving from a science of characterization and categorization to one of quantitative analysis and mechanistic understanding. Very early on, the MIT Biology Department had the vision to focus hiring in the exciting new area of molecular biology, building a premier department and winning world acclaim. Biology thus now stands poised to become a foundational science, along with physics and chemistry, for engineering.

The field of toxicology at MIT also dates back to the late nineteenth century, and has origins in the Department of Civil & Sanitary Engineering (which is also the origin of the Department of Biology). The early emphasis was on sanitary chemistry and microbiology and identified for the first time the importance of biological toxins in food and water. Thus, toxicology at MIT originated in the School of Engineering and the current move is a return to its origins. The current program began in the early 1960s, which created the emphasis in molecular toxicology and led to its standing as a world leader in research and education.

MIT again is poised to play a leading role in determining the direction of how a scientific revolution advances the field of engineering. Just as at the turn of the century theoretical chemistry was adopted as a sound basis for an educated (chemical) engineer at the urging of the Chemistry Department, a course in modern biology was adopted in 1991 as a requirement for all MIT undergraduates at the urging of the Biology Department.

One of our guiding concepts, then, is that we will create curricula in which biology and engineering are taught as simultaneously and synergistically as possible, rather than biology being merely added on top of an engineering background. We aim to emphasize fundamental aspects of analyzing and synthesizing biological information in an integrated manner across the full hierarchical range of scale -- from molecular to cell to tissue to organism -- instead of focusing on specific applications. The engineering/biology combination thus forms as a coherent whole before being directed toward an application field as illustrated in this schematic relation. 

The continued inclusion of mathematics, physics, and chemistry as part of the engineering science-base should be taken implicitly.

At the same time, we are convinced that these new curricula should remain firmly grounded in the core Departmental disciplines that have served MIT so well in flexibly responding to new fields that arise and evolve. This conviction is the cornerstone of our plans for the structure of our new academic unit, the composition of its faculty, and the organization of its degree programs.

Previously, training along these lines has occurred along a variety of individual avenues within traditional engineering and science Departments as well as more specialized curricula such as biomedical engineering and toxicology. However, we believe that today all these fields represent diverse directions for application of students who have learned how to solve problems combining engineering perspective and approach with the knowledge and tools of modern molecular biology. We believe by unifying the science/engineering base underlying these disparate applied avenues MIT will again define a new field of engineering.

How BEH Came to Be

A group of faculty from ChE, EECS, and ME -- the Departments which have typically seen the bulk of the numbers of undergraduates interested in bioengineering -- began to meet informally in 1991 to discuss educational issues, and by 1993 this group evolved into an ad hoc interdepartmental Biomedical Engineering Curriculum Committee, with members drawn from a broad spectrum of Engineering faculty and from HST. This committee evolved to include members from the School of Science, and developed a Minor in Biomedical Engineering as MIT's first interdepartmental Minor degree. The BME Minor was approved in May 1995 by a vote of the MIT faculty and over 70 students are enrolled in or have completed the BME minor. Since its inception, the BME Minor has been run by the Center for Biomedical Engineering, which is primarily an inter-Departmental research center possessing no funding to support curriculum development, faculty time, teaching assistants, laboratory supplies, etc. Faculty time spent advising students enrolled in the minor has been essentially pro bono, on top of time spent on regular departmental advising of undergraduates.

As student and faculty interest in biomedical engineering, and bioengineering more broadly, increased dramatically at MIT following the creation of the Center for Biomedical Engineering, the higher administration responded in 1996 by forming an Institute-wide committee to define the need for new educational programs at the engineering/biology interface. Members of this committee were Professors Alan Grodzinsky (EECS; Chair), Richard Cohen (HST), Martha Gray (HST), Eric Grimson (EECS), Richard Hynes (Biology), Douglas Lauffenburger (ChE), and Steven Tannenbaum (Toxicology). Its report was received enthusiastically by the Dean and Council of Department Heads of the School of Engineering, who then proposed formation of a new Department-level Division within SoE possessing tenure-track faculty positions cutting across existing Departments with the goal of continually invigorating bioengineering teaching and research with state-of-the-art knowledge and approaches in the other disciplines and vice versa.

Logistical details of this Division were specified by an Implementation Committee composed of Professors Robert Armstrong (ChE; Chair), Elazer Edelman (HST), Lorna Gibson (MSE), Jeffrey Shapiro (EECS), Gerald Wogan (Toxicology), Ioannis Yannas (ME), Grodzinsky, Lauffenburger, and Tannenbaum. Its establishment was then formally recommended by Engineering Dean Brown and approved by Academic Council, Provost Joel Moses, and President Charles Vest. Because of the move of the faculty from the Division of Toxicology in Whitaker College into the new BEH Division in the School of Engineering, a Process Committee chaired by Claude Canizares (Physics) was convened by President Vest to assure that the procedures followed in this were proper according to MIT policies.

How the Mission of the Division of Bioengineering & Environmental Health Differs from that of HST

The formation of BEH, aimed at the fundamental disciplinary interface between engineering and biology, brings an important new thrust to MIT's portfolio of programs related to human health as well as a broader range of application fields. In order to minimize concern about overlap, the mission of BEH has been defined in strong complement to that of the existing joint program between MIT and Harvard, the Division of Health Sciences & Technology in Whitaker College. These missions have been set out as follows:

BEH: to organize education and research that combines biology and engineering, with special emphasis on biomedical engineering, toxicology, and pharmacology.

HST: to organize education and research in health sciences and technology, with special emphasis on collaborative programs between MIT and Harvard Medical School.

The combination of these two complementary educational programs puts MIT in a position of great strength to have a major impact in all fields where engineering interfaces with biology or medicine. The process of defining the mission and implementation of BEH via discussions with faculty possessing diverse interests ensured a strong and multifaceted program emerged, one we feel will endure and set the standard for education in this important new discipline.