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New interdisciplinary program trains math-savvy medical researchers

By David J. Craig

Young biomedical scientists interested in using the latest mathematical and computational techniques to study the human body are attending BU on full research fellowships this fall, as part of a $1 million grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS).

NIGMS, part of the National Institutes of Health, awarded Boston University its Pre-Doctoral Training grant in June to launch a new interdisciplinary Training Program in Quantitative Biology and Physiology. The five-year grant pays the tuition of three incoming doctoral students this academic year and six new students in each of the next four years.

Students in the program will work toward a Ph.D. from the College of Engineering's biomedical engineering department or from the College of Arts and Science's mathematics or biology departments, and will complete courses and laboratory work in all three disciplines. Students awarded the fellowship are funded for the first two years of their graduate work, and are expected to join a faculty member's research team thereafter. This year's recipients are Carlos Lopez, Tara Keck, and Michael Richards, all of whom are enrolled in the biomedical engineering department.

"We want to create a new cadre of biomedical scientists -- scientists who want to discover how the body works, from the level of molecules all the way up to tissues and organ systems, using a quantitative mathematical approach," says Ken Lutchen, ENG professor and chairman of the biomedical engineering department, who is overseeing the program. "Scientists who come out of this program will be able to use a computer to simulate the impact that a drug will have if delivered in a particular way, for example, or to discover the exact mechanisms that lie behind a particular pathology."

Faculty in the biomedical engineering, mathematics, and biology departments currently collaborate on research projects that rely heavily on computational modeling, Lutchen says, such as through the Center for Biodynamics. "We have the courses, the research projects, and the infrastructure in place for the program," he says.

The Training Program in Quantitative Biology and Physiology will create a structured curriculum in the area for the first time at BU, however, and will require students to do a rotation of at least three laboratories to learn to use computational modeling methods at several levels of biomedical research -- at the subcellular, cellular, tissue, neurosensory, or organ system levels, for example.

Experts at using computational modeling in biomedical research must be adept at "understanding how phenomena that occurs at one level affect other levels," Lutchen says. "We're in the midst of a revolution in computational technology as well as a revolution in terms of the kind of information that can be gathered about the body, through advances in imaging, for example. And by using computers we can very efficiently start to understand how the causes of a disease like asthma, which at first might seem to involve only the muscles in the lungs' airways or the airway walls, actually involves a whole confluence of factors and might go all the way back to the molecular or even the genetic level."

As part of the Training Program in Quantitative Biology and Physiology, the biomedical engineering, mathematics, and biology departments will launch a new seminar series about computational modeling, a journal club for students and faculty in the program, and will designate a common office space for the program's first-year students.

Lutchen says he hopes that the NIGMS will continue to fund the program after the initial five-year period of the grant. "The better we do at establishing a solid program and the more our students are having an impact on their field, the more willing the Institute is probably going to be to continue the grant and to have the number of students funded increase."

He adds that the program is designed to complement the study of physiological systems dynamics, one of the three major research focuses funded by the $14 million Whitaker Foundation Leadership Award that the biomedical engineering department received this year. "Physiological systems dynamics involves how phenomena at the cellular and subcellular level impact the function of whole organ systems, and it is an area that is also taking advantage of the computational revolution. Both the Leadership Award and the NIH grant are highly consistent with the University's strengths and our vision of what the most important challenges are in the future of bioengineering and biomedical science."

7 September 2001
Boston University
Office of University Relations