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By Tim Stoddard
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Jim Collins, a UNI and ENG biomedical engineering professor, has been recognized with a 2003 MacArthur Fellowship. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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Jim Collins thought someone was playing a joke on him last week when
the phone rang and a caller identifying himself as Jonathan Fanton, president
of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, informed him that
he’d received a 2003 MacArthur Fellowship. “I was shocked,” says
the UNI and ENG biomedical engineering professor. “I asked him
if this was a prank phone call. He assured me that it was not, and gave
me a phone number to call back.” Playing along, Collins dialed
the number and spoke with foundation representatives, who confirmed the
good news.
Commonly known as genius awards, MacArthur Fellowships do not
reward just intellectual excellence. According to the foundation, the
fellowships
are given to individuals who transcend traditional boundaries and show “exceptional
merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work” in
wide-ranging fields. The 24 fellows selected this year include a blacksmith,
a fiction writer, a nurse, and an archaeologist. Each receives a $500,000
stipend over five years with no strings attached, meaning that fellows
may use the money however they wish.
Collins, who is director of the Applied
Biodynamics Laboratory and codirector of the Center for Biodynamics (CBD),
is the third BU faculty member to
receive a MacArthur Fellowship. Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, a CAS professor
of creative writing, was in the first class of MacArthur Fellows when
the program started in 1981. Nancy Kopell, William Goodwin Aurelio Professor
of Mathematics and Science and codirector of the CBD with Collins, was
a 1990 MacArthur Fellow.
This is not the first time that Collins has
been recognized for his creative work. He was honored in 2000 by Technology
Review as one of 100 young
innovators “who will shape the future of technology.” He’s
also been inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute
for Medical and Biomedical Engineering, an honor reserved for an elite
2 percent of scientists in the field.
His research uses dynamical systems
theory and other advanced forms of mathematics, biology, and biomedical
engineering to better understand
how physiological systems work and to develop new clinical devices. “I
find it more stimulating and exciting to be working across the boundaries,” Collins
says. “One of the exciting things about being here at BU is that
the University has been incredibly supportive of interdisciplinary science — well before it became popular. Charles DeLisi was a big proponent
of interdisciplinary research, and in hiring people who were doing creative
work that didn’t fall along traditional lines.” DeLisi, former
ENG dean, is the Arthur G. B. Metcalf Professor of Science and Engineering
and senior associate provost of bioscience.
David Campbell, an ENG professor
and dean of the college, notes that the University has provided fertile
ground for innovators such as Collins. “Jim’s
work is a real tour de force,” he says. “It’s been
made possible to a considerable extent by the investments BU and the
College of Engineering have made in cellular and subcellular biomedical
engineering.”
Good vibrations
Collins hasn’t yet had time to
absorb the news about the MacArthur Fellowship. He was in Nashville last
week attending a conference, where
he was inundated with phone calls from the media about a paper he coauthored
in the British medical journal Lancet. With a team of scientists that
included Attila Priplata (ENG’00,’02),
a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering, Collins reported that one
of his inventions — shoes with randomly vibrating insoles — markedly
improves balance in elderly people. The findings may someday help prevent
falls, which are the leading cause of injury-related deaths for people
over the age of 65.
A major thrust of Collins’ research over the
past decade has been to explore how biological signals such as nerve
impulses are affected
by background noise (defined in the broadest sense as unwanted signals
interfering with the desired information). His work builds upon a principle
called stochastic resonance, which holds that adding noise to a system
actually improves the detection of weak signals in certain circumstances.
With his colleagues at CBD, he has applied stochastic resonance to the
problem of balance control in people who’ve suffered diminished
feeling in their feet because of old age, diabetes, or stroke. Much of
our sense of balance is guided by pressure information on the soles.
By stimulating the feet with random vibrations that are too faint to
feel, Collins has helped boost the signal from the soles, so that the
brain feels the foot pressure and regains a sense of balance.
Collins
is probably most well-known for his groundbreaking research developing
so-called genetic applets — mechanisms that can be implanted in a patient
and programmed to control cell function. With his former graduate student
Timothy Gardner (ENG’00), Collins created the world’s first
genetic toggle switch in 2000. The device turns specific genes on and
off like a light switch. In the future, the toggle experiments could
become the foundation of more complex devices for a range of applications,
such as a sensor to detect biological weapons, or a device that warns
diabetic patients when their blood sugar is dangerously high or low and
automatically activates the production of insulin.
The MacArthur Fellowship
recognizes Collins’ innovative work in
the laboratory, but he is also a celebrated teacher whom students have
described as a dynamo in the classroom. He was named the 1998 College
of Engineering professor of the year, and he won the Metcalf Cup and
Prize, the University’s highest teaching honor, in 2000.
Collins
doesn’t yet know how he will use the generous stipend from
the MacArthur Foundation. “It’s all been so sudden,” he
says. “I really haven’t had time to think carefully about
the different programs or ideas I’d like to pursue.”
Unlike
with most research grants, however, he doesn’t have to use
the money in any specific way. “The real value of the MacArthur
award,” says Campbell, “apart from the prestige associated
with it and the reflected glory that bathes all of BU, is that Jim will
now have money that allows him to pursue whatever strikes his fancy.
It’s often the case that the most creative ideas do not win immediate
acceptance from funding agencies, which are a bit more conservative than
they ought to be, especially when money is tight. This fellowship gives
Jim the ability to go wherever his thoughts lead him. It’s fabulous.”
10
October 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations