BIOBOOM

ASEE Prism, Nov 2004 by Loftus, Margaret

BIOENGINEERING IS ONE OF THE FASTEST-GROWING MAJORS AT MANY UNIVERSITIES, AND UCLA IS THE LATEST SCHOOL TO HOP ON THE BANDWAGON. BY MARGARET LOFTUS

When the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) started accepting applications last year for its brand-new bioengineering undergraduate program, it knew there'd be lots of interest but nothing like deluge of applications it received -some 2,000 in all - for 35 slots. Among those looking to get in were 190 high school seniors with perfect CPA's and SAT scores. "It's just like computer science in the mid-80s," says Carlo Montcmagno, chair of the new department.

Right now, many universities arc intent on catching that wave. From UCLA to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), undergraduate and graduate bioengineering programs are cropping up all over the country. And older, more established programs, many of them under the rubric of "biomedical engineering" like Johns Hopkins, Purdue, and Syracuse, are revamping and expanding their offerings. (In theory, bioengineering is a much broader field than biomedical engineering but the terms are often used interchangeably). According to the Whitaker Foundation, which supports research and education in biomedical engineering, some 130 biomedical engineering programs exist today, up from 42 in the early 1990s.

"Bioengineering is among the most popular and fastest-growing undergraduate majors at top research universities nationwide," says Harvey Borovetz, chair of the bioengineering department in the University of Pittsburgh's school of engineering. About 2,500 of the roughly 400,000 engineering undergraduates in the United States in 1979 majored in bioengineering. By 2002, the number of engineering students had basically stayed the same, but the number doing bioengineering had soared to 11,000.

How did bioengineering get to be such a hot ticket? "It's drawing on two very fast-moving revolutions in microelectronics and biology," says Frank Blanchard, director of communications at the Whitaker Foundation. For example, now that the genome has been mapped, biology has an overwhelming amount of information, he says and "Somebody's got to figure out how to put all the pieces of the puzzle together."

Where once bioengineering was considered the application of engineering principles to biology, educators now say it's a stand-alone discipline poised to create a whole new breed of scientist. "We're creating a new kind of engineer, someone, for example, who knows enough biology to collaborate with a mechanical engineer and a biologist to find new ways to grow bone," explains Linda Griffith, professor of biological and mechanical engineering at MIT and chair of the school's committee working to create an undergraduate biological engineering program. Compared with traditional disciplines like civil and electrical engineering, which UCLA's Montemagno describes as being on the flat part of the growth curve, "[bioengineering is] in a very steep part ofthat curve, we're going to see advancements happen very quickly and young people see that."

Not much is lost on this techno-savvy generation. Bororvetz says Pitt routinely gets e-mails from 17-year-olds curious about their bioengineering program. "Quite frankly, the kids are asking for it," he says, "in many ways they're driving it." Montemagno credits the media and science fiction with planting the seed. "They see what they think is possible and nobody is telling them they can't do it." And many of these budding scientists are young women. It's not at all unusual for a bioengineering program to be split evenly between the sexes, a far cry from other engineering disciplines where women make up just over 20 percent of graduates.

To be sure, bioengineering opens doors to people who in the past may have not considered a career in engineering. "Engineers for so many years have been focused on things like electronic devices, chemical processes, buildings, and bridges. I think we've neglected a large part of the population who has a natural inclination for helping people," says William Durgin, associate provost and vice president for research at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., where the Bioengineering Institute involves faculty, students, research scientists, and postdocs in developing bio-engineered products. "It's not the things that matter in engineering; it's the way we think about things."

Indeed, many potential bioengineers may have made bee-lines to medical school in the past. As a kid who spent a lot of time in the hospital blood-bank lab where his father worked, Timothy Maul knew he wanted to be in medicine. "I always thought being a doctor was the only way to do that." A high school chemistry teacher told him about bioengineering and today he is a third-year post doc at Pitt working to develop a tissue-engineered blood vessel. "I like the idea of helping to push medicine forward or providing medicine at a different level."

KICKING IT OFF

Sensing that the field was poised to explode back in 1991, the Whitaker Foundation made an unprecedented decision for a foundation of its size. "They saw this tremendous opportunity to kick-start this field," Blanchard says. Rather than continue to make annual grants of $12 million - the foundation world-standard of 5 percent of the value of its assets - it would "spend out" their $720 million fortune over the next 15 years and close its doors come 2006.