Integrating biology and engineering

Abstract

This paper presents planned activities and some recent successes related to collaborative efforts between engineering and biology at North Carolina A&T State University. For many years, faculty in engineering and biology have teamed up to submit research proposals, much of this collaboration has occurred through personal relationships among faculty members. More recently, the university has encouraged a formal and intentional cooperation between the two disciplines in an effort to find mutual benefits. Spurred by the establishment of new bioengineering degree programs and helped by the NSF Engineering Research Center for metallic biomaterials, the partnership between engineering and biology has strengthened and is yielding significant benefits for students. The partnership has grown in several dimensions including coursework, funded proposals, joint faculty positions, and shared facilities. During 2010 a team of faculty representing engineering and biology and administrators were awarded an NSF Innovation through Institutional Integration (I3) grant titled EBEE: Enhancing Bioscience and Engineering Education through curriculum integration and research experiences in systems biology. The main theme of the project is to incorporate life sciences education and research across the campus and to demonstrate it by creating intentional and sustained collaborations between the College of Engineering and the Biology Department at North Carolina A&T State University (NCA&T). One example of cross-campus sustainable collaborations is team teaching by faculty from the two disciplines. The mechanical engineering department faculty has recognized that research into new biomaterials is a significant area of emphasis for modern materials research and therefore is an area worthy of study. In order to prepare students, the regularly scheduled course entitled Modern Engineering Materials is being upgraded to include biomaterials. Recognizing that the human body is an amazing machine made up of a series of macro and nano-scale systems including biological pumps, valves, pipes, filters, wiring, as well as contents under pressure, the course will be team taught by engineering and biology professors. In order to introduce undergraduate engineers to these connections, a module was created to identify and study relationships between structure and function in human body tissues and to investigate medical device design. In turn, engineering faculty will help the biologists in helping them use systems biology to model the same physiological systems. Systems biology is a comprehensive quantitative analysis of the manner in which all the components of a biological system interact functionally over time. Engineering faculty will in turn assist the biology faculty in incorporating systems biology into their curriculum. © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education.