Within the fast-changing world of biotechnology, engineers want greater than technical experience — they want the flexibility to collaborate throughout disciplines, sort out advanced issues, and outline the challenges of tomorrow. That’s the mission of MIT’s class 20.051 (Introduction to NEET: Residing Machines), a course throughout the New Engineering Training Transformation (NEET) program.
The course affords undergraduates a sweeping introduction to the life sciences and biotech business, equipping them with design, simulation, and experimental strategies whereas fostering the interdisciplinary mindset wanted for achievement. “In all probability probably the most worthwhile facet of 20.051,” says chemical-biological engineering main Grace Yang, “was the breadth of subjects launched. The life sciences/biotech business is extremely various, nevertheless it’s typically arduous to be taught what the totally different paths are, particularly if you happen to’re simply beginning out. Being launched to totally different fields — artificial biology, immunology, and so forth. — positively helps with publicity to totally different potentialities.”
Yang provides, “On the extra technical facet, there are expertise like CAD or microfluidics design that I positively wouldn’t have discovered with out the category.”
The Faculty of Engineering launched the NEET program in 2017 to arrange undergraduates for the more and more interdisciplinary surroundings of real-world work and analysis. College students begin as sophomores in one in every of 4 areas of focus or “threads” — Autonomous Machines, Local weather and Sustainability Techniques, Digital Cities, and Residing Machines — and full a three-year certificates program emphasizing hands-on studying and collaboration.
Within the Residing Machines thread, 20.051 stands out for serving to college students navigate and combine insights from a number of disciplines. Based on Mehdi Salek, a NEET lecturer and the course’s lead teacher, “The primary targets in designing 20.051 was to develop an interdisciplinary mindset and to equip college students with important engineering and communication expertise for tackling challenges in biomedical engineering and biotechnology.”
Salek factors out that mechanical engineering college students, as an illustration, achieve worthwhile alternatives to be taught the language and foundational ideas of biology and chemistry. In the meantime, college students from life sciences disciplines increase their experience by creating design and technical expertise, making a well-rounded, interdisciplinary studying expertise.
The course introduces key matter design and fabrication strategies, primary simulation methods, problem-solving expertise, and experimental design, says Salek, “all of that are essential for tackling advanced biomedical challenges,” reminiscent of creating new remedy methods to fight human illness.
“A trademark of 20.051,” says Linda Griffith, the NEET Residing Machines founding college lead and Faculty of Engineering Professor of Instructing Innovation, is instructing college students probably the most difficult expertise: “mastering the artwork of downside definition.” “We information them to ask essential questions, like: What’s the cutting-edge within the area? What would characterize a large leap ahead? Can a single step speed up progress throughout the sphere? Are new engineering approaches the important thing to transformational change the place instruments are at present inadequate?”
“We offer college students with a graphic apprenticeship in the issue definition course of,” Griffith says, “and set them as much as remedy the issues of their analysis immersions if they want.”
Organic engineering main Zixuan Liu says a method wherein 20.051 stood out from different lessons is in its emphasis on hands-on initiatives. Engaged on an interdisciplinary staff that included a chemical-biological engineering main and a pc science and molecular biology main, Liu helped design a microfluidics gadget, or “organ on a chip.” Such units usually use residing cells or tissue which are mixed with different residing parts or chemical brokers to duplicate and experiment with interactions that may happen within the physique. Liu’s staff designed a tool to mannequin bone marrow. Its supposed perform was to duplicate hematopoiesis — the event and differentiation of blood cells — in a miniature, managed surroundings.
Laptop science and engineering main Danny Antonelli says that by his 20.051 microfluidics undertaking — which was designed to develop ache neurons in a diabetic medium to be able to simulate diabetic neuropathy — “we received expertise with simulation software program, literature assessment, design software program, 3D printing, and bio lab work, none of which I had achieved in a category earlier than. And that was only for one in every of our initiatives!”
All through the category, college students have important alternatives to community, join with researchers in numerous disciplines, and change into a part of a various, interdisciplinary neighborhood. “The visitor lecturers are sometimes PIs [principal investigators] of various labs all through MIT. It was actually useful to listen to their analysis firsthand, and we had the prospect to introduce ourselves after class,” Antonelli says.
This time period, 20.051 college students are collaborating with Griffith’s lab to research the function of Fusobacterium nucleatum in endometriosis, whereas different college students are working with Bryan Bryson, the Phillip and Susan Ragon Profession Improvement Professor within the Division of Organic Engineering, to deal with limitations in tuberculosis analysis. Bryson’s college students are designing human microphysiological fashions to discover early an infection responses, providing alternate options to conventional mouse fashions.
“The emphasis on interdisciplinary pondering and collaboration, and publicity to rising applied sciences, push college students to develop new expertise and increase their views,” Salek says. “This helps them to achieve confidence of their capability to navigate advanced challenges, talk successfully throughout fields and disciplines, and pursue progressive options, which has an enduring impact on their tutorial {and professional} progress.”
