{"id":161652,"date":"2025-04-09T13:17:24","date_gmt":"2025-04-09T17:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/?p=161652"},"modified":"2025-04-16T10:58:57","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T14:58:57","slug":"bela-suki-presents-2025-delisi-lecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/2025\/04\/09\/bela-suki-presents-2025-delisi-lecture\/","title":{"rendered":"B\u00e9la Suki Presents 2025 DeLisi Lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong>Multidisciplinary expert presents lung complexities at signature ENG event<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><strong>By Patrick L. Kennedy<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Professor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/profile\/bela-suki-ph-d\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">B\u00e9la Suki<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/bme\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BME<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/mse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">MSE<\/a>), recipient of the 2025 Charles DeLisi Award and Distinguished Lecture, delivered \u201cComplexity in Translational Biomechanics and Mechanobiology\u201d to a capacity crowd in the Boston University Photonics Center\u2019s Colloquium Room on April 3.<\/p>\n<p>A native of Hungary who began his career as a physicist, Suki has advanced the research community\u2019s understanding of the impacts of physical forces on cell function, in particular related to the lung. He has invented a device, called AccuStretch, that mimics the breathing action of the lung, allowing researchers to test treatments on diseased lung tissue from organ donors. Suki has also developed a new way to measure the stiffness of lung tissue, and a computational model aimed at better understanding the progression of pulmonary fibrosis.<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"padding-right:1em;\" align=\"left\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/K9kjuPhWUdo?si=zSapNNIwqr5kVnqO\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h4><strong>Intellectually fearless<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>\u201cThere is no aspect of the integration of science, engineering, and technology related to lung function that B\u00e9la would not be able to impact and use,\u201d said ENG Dean <em>Emeritus<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/profile\/kenneth-r-lutchen-ph-d\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kenneth Lutchen<\/a> (BME) in opening remarks. Lutchen, a professor of biomedical engineering, has worked extensively with Suki since the early 1990s, and is BU\u2019s senior advisor to the president on strategy and innovation.<\/p>\n<p>Suki has brought expertise in physiology, acoustics, estimation theory, modeling, signal processing, and nonlinear systems to the study of the lung. \u201cThe lung is inherently nonlinear, while we had been modeling it as if it were linear, as most engineers try to do,\u201d said Lutchen. \u201cI have been around a lot of scientists in my life, and I don&#8217;t know anyone who is as robust and intellectually fearless and diverse in applying any technology, science, and method you can think of to better understanding the lung function at every level.\u201d<\/p>\n<h4><strong>Toward a more useful model<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>In his lecture, Suki discussed some unexpected complexities in the biomechanics of the lung, and their implications for the understanding and treatment of diseases such as pulmonary emphysema.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_161659\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-161659\" style=\"width: 399px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/eng\/files\/2025\/04\/Ken-and-Bela-636x562.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"389\" height=\"344\" class=\"wp-image-161659\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/files\/2025\/04\/Ken-and-Bela-636x562.jpg 636w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/files\/2025\/04\/Ken-and-Bela-768x678.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/files\/2025\/04\/Ken-and-Bela.jpg 959w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 389px) 100vw, 389px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-161659\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>ENG Dean Emeritus Kenneth Lutchen (left) with longtime colleague Bela Suki, recipient of the 2025 DeLisi Award and Lecture.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cWhen we ventilate a patient\u2019s lung, the volume and rate of air from the machine is always the same,\u201d Suki said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t really breathe like that.\u201d In fact, the depth of breaths we take varies over time. Suki and colleagues found that diseased lungs, especially, inflate in a complex, \u201cavalanche-like\u201d manner. The team applied algorithms to develop a method of variable ventilation which has been shown to improve gas exchange and inflammation in both developing and adult lungs.<\/p>\n<p>Suki\u2019s lab also studied collagen deposition throughout lungs afflicted with pulmonary fibrosis, and they developed a computational model that predicts bifurcations in the progression of the disease.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGeorge Box is quoted as saying, \u2018All models are wrong, but some are useful,\u2019\u201d said Suki. \u201cI would say that the ultimate usefulness of a model is when it is replaced by an even more useful model.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since joining BU, Suki has served on several NIH-funded grants, including a Transformative R01. He has authored or co-authored 246 peer-reviewed articles, 12 book chapters, and a book; and advised more than 30 graduate students and 20 postdoctoral fellows. A fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, Suki has earned the Joseph R. Rodarte Award for Scientific Distinction from the American Thoracic Society, and the Evans Center Research Collaborator Award from the BU Chobanian &amp; Avedisian School of Medicine.<\/p>\n<h4><strong>Building scalable AI<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>Before Suki\u2019s presentation, ENG Dean\u00a0<em>ad interim<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/profile\/elise-morgan-ph-d\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Elise Morgan<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/me\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ME<\/a>, MSE, BME)\u00a0presented Assistant Professor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/profile\/ohn-bar-eshed\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Eshed Ohn-Bar<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">ECE<\/a>) with the Early Career Research Excellence Award. The award celebrates the significant, recent, high-impact research achievements of exemplary tenure-track faculty who are within 10 years of receiving their PhD. Ohn-Bar has garnered multiple Best Paper Awards and the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society\u2019s Best PhD Dissertation Award as he has worked toward integrating computer vision, multimodal sensing, and machine learning to build scalable AI systems for a variety of applications.<\/p>\n<h4><strong>Father of the Human Genome Project<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>One of the college\u2019s signature events, the DeLisi Lecture recognizes researchers with extraordinary records of well-cited scholarship, senior leaders in industry, and inventors of transformative technologies. The lecture was endowed by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/profile\/charles-delisi-ph-d\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><u>Charles DeLisi<\/u><\/a>, who is widely considered the father of the Human Genome Project and served as dean of the college from 1990 to 2000. DeLisi recruited leading researchers in biomedical, manufacturing, aerospace and mechanical engineering, photonics and other engineering fields, establishing a research infrastructure that ultimately propelled the college into the top ranks of engineering graduate programs. In 1999 he founded\u2014and then chaired for more than a decade\u2014BU\u2019s Bioinformatics Program, the first such program in the nation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThere is no aspect of the integration of science, engineering, and technology related to lung function that B\u00e9la would not be able to impact and use.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2662,"featured_media":161657,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[236,257,1081,899,907,1041,1162,1040,909,908],"tags":[715,690,983,752,562],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161652"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161968,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161652\/revisions\/161968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}