Life’s Beginnings

Biological engineering is a science-based discipline founded upon the biological sciences in the same way that chemical engineering, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering can be based upon chemistry, electricity and magnetism, and classical mechanics, respectively.

Biological engineering can be differentiated from its roots of pure biology or other engineering fields. Biological studies often follow a reductionist approach in viewing a system on its smallest possible scale which naturally leads toward the development of tools like functional genomics. Engineering approaches, using classical design perspectives, are constructionist, building new devices, approaches, and technologies from component parts or concepts. Biological
engineering uses both approaches in concert, relying on reductionist approaches to identify, understand, and organize the fundamental units, which are then integrated to generate something new. In addition, because it is an engineering discipline, biological engineering is fundamentally concerned with not just the basic science, but its practical application of the scientific knowledge to solve real-world problems in a cost-effective way.

Although engineered biological systems have been used to manipulate information, construct materials, process chemicals, produce energy, provide food, and help maintain or enhance human health and our environment, our ability to quickly and reliably engineer biological systems that behave as expected is at present less well developed than our mastery over mechanical and electrical systems.

ABET, the U.S.-based accreditation board for engineering B.S. programs, makes a distinction between biomedical engineering and biological engineering, though there is much overlap (see above). Foundational courses are often the same and include thermodynamics, fluid and mechanical dynamics, kinetics, electronics, and materials properties. According to Professor Doug Lauffenburger of MIT, biological engineering (like biotechnology) has a broader base which applies engineering principles to an enormous range of size and complexities of systems ranging from the molecular level – molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology, pharmacology, protein chemistry, cytology, immunology, neurobiology and neuroscience (often but not always using biological substances) – to cellular and tissue-based methods (including devices and sensors), whole macroscopic organisms (plants, animals), and up increasing length scales to whole ecosystems.

The word bioengineering was coined by British scientist and broadcaster Heinz Wolff in 1954. The term bioengineering is also used to describe the use of vegetation in civil engineering construction. The term bioengineering may also be applied to

environmental modifications such as surface soil protection, slope stabilization, watercourse and shoreline protection, windbreaks, vegetation barriers including noise barriers and visual screens, and the ecological enhancement of an area. The first biological engineering program was created at Mississippi State University in 1967, making it the first biological engineering curriculum in the United States. More recent programs have been launched at MIT and Utah State University. The emergent field of biorobotics has become a prominent subdicipline of bioengineering.

Before World War II the field of bioengineering was essentially unknown, and little communication or interaction existed between the engineer and the life scientist. A few exceptions, however, should be noted. The agricultural engineer and the chemical engineer, involved in fermentation processes, have always been bioengineers in the broadest sense of the definition since they deal with biological systems and work with biologists. The civil engineer, specializing in sanitation, has applied biological principles in the work. Mechanical engineers have worked with the medical profession for many years in the development of artificial limbs. Another area of mechanical engineering that falls in the field of bioengineering is the air-conditioning field. In the early 1920s engineers and physiologists were employed by the American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers to study the effects of temperature and humidity on humans and to provide design criteria for heating and air-conditioning systems.

Today there are many more examples of interaction between biology and engineering, particularly in the medical and life-support fields. In addition to an increased awareness of the need for communication between the engineer and the associate in the life sciences, there is an increasing recognition of the role the engineer can play in several of the biological fields, including human medicine, and, likewise, an awareness of the contributions biological science can make toward the solution of engineering problems.

Much of the increase in bioengineering activity can be credited to electrical engineers. In the 1950s bioengineering meetings were dominated by sessions devoted to medical electronics. Medical instrumentation and medical electronics continue to be major areas of interest, but biological modeling, blood-flow dynamics, prosthetics, biomechanics (dynamics of body motion and strength of materials), biological heat transfer, biomaterials, and other areas are now included in conference programs.

Bioengineering developed out of specific desires or needs: the desire of surgeons to bypass the heart, the need for replacement organs, the requirement for life support in space, and many more. In most cases the early interaction and education were a result of personal contacts between physician, or physiologist, and engineer. Communication between the engineer and the life scientist was immediately recognized as a problem. Most engineers who wandered into the field in its early days probably had an exposure to biology through a high-school course and no further work. To overcome this problem, engineers began to study not only the subject matter but also the methods and techniques of their counterparts in medicine, physiology, psychology, and biology. Much of the information was self-taught or obtained through personal association and discussions. Finally, recognizing a need to assist in overcoming the communication barrier as well as to prepare engineers for the future, engineering schools developed courses and curricula in bioengineering.