November 13, 1997 Contact: Leila Belkora (312) 996-3457 [email protected]
The University of Illinois at Chicago has expanded its bioengineering program, creating a new department in the College of Engineering to support research and teaching in the interdisciplinary field.
Engineering dean Lawrence Kennedy said the university is giving significant new emphasis to the burgeoning field of bioengineering to combine UIC's strengths in engineering and medicine.
"The university and the college have made a major commitment" in developing the new academic and research activity, said Kennedy. Three senior and three junior faculty positions have been established in addition to 18 joint appointment positions at UIC and six adjunct positions at other area medical centers.
The new bioengineering department, which formed at the beginning of the 1997-98 academic year, "can bring to bear a phenomenal amount of medical and engineering talent to address the growing national focus on increasing quality health care at reduced cost," said Kennedy.
The new department head, who will assume the post in January, is Richard Magin, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a faculty member in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology there. Magin's expertise is in the biological effects of electric and magnetic fields, targeted drug delivery and magnetic resonance imaging.
Magin said the time is ripe for bioengineering to emerge as a distinct discipline and for UIC to take the lead in training engineers who solve biological problems.
"Just as chemical engineering emerged from chemistry about 50 years ago to optimize chemical production and separation processes, today bioengineering is poised to apply genetic engineering techniques to modify cell and tissue function," he said. "I want bioengineers to work with cells and tissues the same way that electrical engineers work with transistors and integrated circuits, using optimization, visualization, control and feedback."
Magin noted that bioengineering is more than simply applying engineering technology to medical problems. As an illustration of the difference, he describes two possible approaches to treating diabetes. A technologist might devise glucose sensors and a mechanical pump to dispense insulin into the bloodstream from a reservoir outside the body, while a bioengineer's solution might involve a type of sponge embedded with pancreatic cells which have been optimized for the patient, implanted in the body.
A cornerstone of Magin's plan is to bring researchers and teachers from UIC's medical departments together with their counterparts in engineering.
"What got me excited about UIC was the commitment of deans, faculty and students to expand bioengineering to a level which will bring about a large integration between the two disciplines," he said. "I'm hoping to build up the department so it becomes a strong part of the engineering college, and a top 10 program nationally."
UIC's urban location is also an asset, Magin said.
"There's a 'real world' very close in Chicago," said Magin, who has broad experience in medical, corporate and academic environments. "It all feeds back into the way the bioengineering program is structured. Graduate students will still be educated to pursue professional academic and research careers, but I see nothing wrong with developing students with skills for the industrial world."
To accommodate the range of aspirations of students, which may include going to medical school or starting a bioengineering company, Magin said he is open to innovative partnerships with various parts of campus.
"Good ideas will fall in fertile ground," he promised. -UIC-
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