{"id":119493,"date":"2022-07-15T15:38:27","date_gmt":"2022-07-15T19:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?page_id=119493"},"modified":"2026-05-13T13:56:37","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:56:37","slug":"lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/about-eng\/meet-the-dean\/lessons-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the fall, when we were several months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote here that while the nation\u2019s ca\u00adpacity to successfully fight the pandemic was being diminished by anti-science thinking, it was science and technology that would ultimately get us out of the pandemic. Now, a year after the outbreak, science and technology have, indeed, proven to be the heroes. But there are lessons to be learned from the pandemic\u2014and our response to it\u2014that can guide us as we look to the future.<\/p>\n

For one, the sudden emergence and rapid global spread of COVID-19 have taught us that this is unlikely to be the last biological emergency we will face. The disease went from nonexistent to full-scale pandemic in a few short months, a scope and pace unprecedented in human history. It\u2019s clear that a biological threat has the potential to become a rapid danger to human life and function on the planet without regard to country of citizenship or economic status.<\/p>\n

The encouraging news is that we\u2019ve also learned we have the capacity to meet such threats. The speed with which vac\u00adcines were developed was unprecedented; a process that typically takes several years was largely completed in less than a year. We now see that extraordinary power of marshaling our nation\u2019s innovative biomedical science and engineering firepower. This success reminds us of the remarkable pivoting of our automobile industry to manufacture tanks and planes rapidly during World War II. But, unlike then, our biotechnology industry had to invent from scratch new ways to detect and fight the virus and to do so at an unimaginable manufactural scale. When challenged, our biomedical scientific and engineering communities responded heroically.<\/p>\n

As vaccine distribution efforts ramp up, policymakers are looking at how we can prepare for the next biological emer\u00adgency. In my recent visit to Capitol Hill with the Engineering Deans Institute, I heard of several emerging initiatives. For example, forming a national network of certified laboratories that would develop off-the-shelf technologies and stand by to respond to the next outbreak. The idea has merit, but we need to be wary of a large investment up front creating \u201cready-to-go\u201d facilities that would have little to do until the next emergency happens.<\/p>\n

A better option might be to create a network of laboratories or centers for continuous research and technology development at the intersection of under\u00adstanding and manipulating the immune system, with an eye toward rapidly translating innovations to respond to the next threat. These efforts should be aimed at increasingly innovating low-cost, reliable new virus detection and testing methods, and the rapid engineering of manufacturable vaccine to meet any new threat. An ever-increasing knowledge of, and ability to interact with, the immune system should drive this effort. We want to intercept a novel pathogen before it becomes rampant.<\/p>\n

This will require a range of engineers working with bioscientists to develop sensors, devise nanolevel testing and deliv\u00adery systems and manipulate genes and proteins to react to specific pathogens. We will need robotic systems to process millions of tests each day. We will need manufacturing technology to produce a rem\u00adedy at a massive scale, and a distribution system that is fast and secure from threats like cyberattacks. We will also need expertise from medicine, public health and other fields that will give us the range of perspectives on what we need to do to prepare for a rapid response to the next emergency and converge on the solution.<\/p>\n

As you can read in the spring issue of ENGineer<\/em><\/a>, this kind of convergent approach to address\u00ading society\u2019s important problems will be central to the College of Engineering\u2019s future. I believe that bringing together expertise from multiple disciplines within and outside of engineering offers us the fastest, most efficient and most success\u00adful path to accelerate the development of effective and scalable solutions to critical problems. COVID-19 is an urgent problem that we hope is on track to being solved in the near term, but there are oth\u00ader, longer-term and important problems facing society that will require the kinds of engineers we have working and learn\u00ading at Boston University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen In the fall, when we were several months into the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote here that while the nation\u2019s ca\u00adpacity to successfully fight the pandemic was being diminished by anti-science thinking, it was science and technology that would ultimately get us out of the pandemic. Now, a year after the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8588,"featured_media":0,"parent":118881,"menu_order":27,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/119493"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8588"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119493"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/119493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174239,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/119493\/revisions\/174239"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/118881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}