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Letters
To The Faculty Newsletter:
In "A New Kind Of Department To Bring Biological Science Into Engineering," in the September/October 1998 issue of the Newsletter, the authors, Douglas A. Lauffenburger and Stephen R. Tannenbaum, observe that "Formation of administrative structures to coordinate inter-departmental research initiatives has traditionally been easy for the Institute...," while "...formation of an administrative structure for education at interdisciplinary interfaces requires more careful consideration."
Yet the "New Kind Of Department To Bring Biological Science Into Engineering" has no formal connection with the department that is Biology at MIT, nor to the Whitehead Institute, nor to the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, that is to say, no connection with the School of Science. As I said in my letter in the January/February 1997 issue of the Newsletter "Biomedical Engineering - A Cornucopia of Challenging Engineering Tasks," concurring with the central thesis of Professor Griffith-Cima in her October/November 1996 article "A Modest Proposal for Biomedical Engineering Education," "much of the present promise and challenge of biomedical engineering is at its interface with biology." That research at this interface was difficult at MIT became clear to me in the early 80s when my in vitro experiments exercising human hips under physiological conditions showed a pronounced temperature rise in cartilage [Tepic, S., Macirowski, T. and Mann, R.W., J. of Orthop. Res., Vol. 3, No. 4, 1985, pp. 517-520]. I couldn't interest any biology faculty at MIT in collaboration exploring the cellular consequences, so the follow-up research was done at MGH [Madreperla, S.A., et al., J. of Orthop. Res., Vol. 3, No. 1, 1985, pp. 30-35].
Not that I discount the "careful consideration," if not direct obstruction, which can be generated at MIT when change which impacts and threatens traditional prerogatives is proposed. In 1972, the then Institute president and provost asked me to chair what was to become the MIT Division of Health Sciences, Technology, Management and Planning, with a steering committee composed of faculty, mostly department heads, from all relevant schools, plus the director of the Harvard-MIT (then) Program in Health Sciences and Technology. (I had been the only "working" faculty member, among university presidents, provosts and deans, on the Executive Committee which formed the Harvard-MIT Program/Division.) I have never spent a more frustrating two years and was relieved when my resignation was accepted and I went back to the student teaching and research which is the joy and fulfillment of faculty status at MIT.
But over 25 years have passed, biology and cognitive science are secure in the School of Science, freshman biology is now a requirement, and bio- and medical engineering have matured. Isn't it time to "Bring Biological Science Into Engineering" through a collaborative effort which includes both Schools and their respective departments? Following the 1996 article and letter, informal follow-on discussions led to my sending a copy of my letter to Professor Griffith-Cima to the dean of the School of Science. In reply the Dean wrote that "these issues are of fundamental importance to the School of Science" and that "we must be intimately involved." The then dean of Engineering is now the provost. Enough said!
Robert
W. Mann
Whitaker Professor Emeritus
Biomedical Engineering
P.S. Added on 19 November 1998: The just-past faculty meeting considered "A proposal to establish a Ph.D. in Bioengineering." In Enclosure B, describing the proposed program, Professor Lauffenburger stressed the "science of biology" in "the interface between engineering and biology" as the mission of the Division of Bioengineering and Environmental Health, and biology figured prominently elsewhere in the text, as well as in the curriculum and theses of the new Ph.D. program. Yet another reason for the formal participation of the MIT Department of Biology.
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