BU President Melissa Gilliam in conversation with Moderna Co-Founder Noubar Afeyan during the opening of the College of Engineering’s 2026 Catalyst Summit, September 17.

Engineering

College of Engineering’s 2026 Catalyst Summit Focused on Decoding Everyday Health

Biomedical researchers and execs shared glimpses of cutting-edge wearables and other forward-looking health tech

For all the good work being done in medicine, the grand challenge of the future is to shift modes from disease management to disease prevention, declared Noubar Afeyan last Thursday at the kickoff to the College of Engineering’s second annual Catalyst Summit at the Duan Family Center for Computing & Data Sciences. “Our healthcare system is really a ‘sick care’ system,” said Afeyan, CEO and founder of Flagship Pioneering, in a fireside chat with Boston University President Melissa Gilliam. “Only 2 percent of our healthcare budget is for prevention. Can we imagine a world in which healthspan rather than lifespan is what we try to maximize?”

It was just one of many insights shared during the two-day event, September 17 and 18, as top BU leaders presided over a gathering of at least 120 pharmaceutical executives, biomedical researchers, entrepreneurs, faculty, students, alumni, and others from Boston and beyond.

This year’s conference explored the topic “Decoding Everyday Health.” Attendees heard the inside stories of a range of innovative health solutions—from the vaccines that ended the pandemic, to the latest wearable monitoring devices on the market, to technologies still under development in labs across academia and industry.

“For many decades, health has been something we could monitor only in snapshots—a visit to the doctor, a blood test, a CAT scan,” said ENG Dean Elise Morgan in opening remarks. “But our bodies are not working in snapshots. They are generating information continuously, and transmitting that information in signals.

“When we talk about everyday health, it’s easy to focus on the visible endpoints—the device on a wrist, the sensor in a hospital room,” said Morgan, who is also the Maysarah K. Sukkar Professor of Engineering Design and Innovation. “But there is much less visible work that makes those endpoints possible.” And often, that work begins “with a researcher asking a fundamental question,” Morgan said. She pointed to the bionic pancreas invented by Edward Damiano, an ENG research professor of biomedical engineering. 

“No such thing as basic research”

Afeyan also oversees research that is driven by fundamental questions. Through Flagship Pioneering, his venture capital firm, he cofounded Moderna, maker of one of the major vaccines against COVID-19. Flagship was also behind one of the earliest biosensing wearable devices, used by professional cyclists to monitor their heart rate during the 2003 Tour de France.

“We ask the ‘what-if’ questions,” said Afeyen of the researchers at Flagship’s portfolio of 100 companies. In the case of Moderna’s vaccines, he said, the question was, “What if you could inject a molecule into a person and use their body’s cells to manufacture proteins that would prevent or treat disease?” It turned out that messenger RNA (mRNA) was that molecule.

“We had to assemble a scientific team with as many engineers as scientists” on the way to making the vaccine a reality, Afeyan said.

“At Boston University, we have made convergent research a top priority,” said Gilliam. “Here, that means crossing disciplines to solve problems that transcend traditional academic boundaries. What does convergence mean to you?”

“I do think convergence, if you want to have an impact, is a necessity,” Afeyan said. “Think of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The musicians are trained in their specialized instruments, but they have to play together to live up to their name. We’re all educated to become specialists in something and we want to be world-class at that and not deviate from it. But you’d be surprised, in an industrial career, how many things you can be world-class at just by keeping an open mind and learning new things.”

Addressing the importance of academia as an engine for scientific discovery, Gilliam asked, “How do you think about the relationship between research universities and industry at this particular moment?”

Afeyen decried the prevailing anti-science attitude that has led to drastic cuts in federal funding for basic research. But to defuse complaints about tax dollars going to satisfy scientists’ curiosity, he suggested a new framing: “There’s no such thing as basic research. There’s enabling research and applied research. [If there’s] no enabling science, [there’s] no applied science. [If there’s] no applied science, [there are] no cures, no food, no lots of things that we take for granted. We should view all of this scientific activity as the fuel on which all innovation and therefore progress depends.”

A lot of science and a bit of luck

Of course, curiosity remains a critical component of scientific activity, along with perseverance, said Takeda President and CEO Julie Kim during the event’s keynote conversation. Her Q&A with Colin Duckett, BU provost and chief academic officer, held lessons for everyone from undergraduates to executives.

“Some of the biggest medicines on the market today were kind of mistakes,” Kim said. “Sometimes it is a little bit of luck [plus] a lot of deep science. It takes years and years of dedicated thinking to really come up with a discovery that makes a difference for patients.”

Because the failure rate in the pharmaceutical industry is so high, Kim said, drug companies need to be dogged in their pursuit of knowledge. “There’s an underlying curiosity that you need to have, and once you figure something out, you keep digging and keep digging.”

Takeda recently received FDA approval for the first medicine to treat the underlying cause of type 1 narcolepsy. But it was a long, never-certain journey to reach that milestone after the initial breakthrough discovery, Kim said. At two different points, major setbacks almost sunk the effort. “You have to keep in mind who you’re doing this for: people with a variety of diseases that don’t have good treatment options,” Kim said. “That’s why you keep going.”

Adding healthy years

The summit also included a conversation between Shyamal Patel, Oura senior vice president of science, and Brian Dunkin (ENG’85), Boston Scientific chief medical officer for endoscopy; as well as a talk between Ed Baker, WHOOP chief product officer, and James Galagan, BioSens8 scientific founder and cocreator and a BU professor of biomedical engineering, microbiology, and electrical and computer engineering.

Patel oversees the Oura Ring, a smart ring used to track sleep, heart rate, and other health indicators. A potential update he expressed excitement about is the use of AI large language models to glean insights from all that data. “Models that learn the language of physiology and behavior might unlock, essentially, a lot of the hidden knowledge that exists in this data,” Patel said. “We can ask, ‘What is the likelihood that Brian will develop hypertension in 20 years?’ And we can simulate counterfactuals: ‘If you change your behaviors in these ways, what will the cumulative impact be?’

“What this means is, instead of thinking about our health retroactively—‘What happened?’—with this approach, we’re increasingly thinking, ‘What could happen, and how can I get ahead of it?’”

That vision somewhat echoed Afeyan’s challenge to the healthcare world, as did Baker’s dream for WHOOP, which also makes a wearable health tracker. “What I get excited about is adding a billion healthy years to the planet,” Baker said. Empowered with sleep and other health data, he explained, WHOOP users might make needed lifestyle changes, adding to their health span. “If we can do that across 200 million members, I think that would make the world a better place.”

Other Catalyst Summit highlights included panel discussions and lightning talks featuring BU faculty and affiliates, an innovation showcase featuring BU-bred biomedical technologies and labs, and the presentation of ENG Distinguished Alumni Awards. 

Find more coverage of the 2026 Catalyst Summit here.