From the Director's Desk
Dr. Peter F. Davies
IME Faculty and Members again enjoyed significant national and international acclaim during 1999-2000. Warren Ewens (Biology) was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London, Lou Soslowsky (Orthopaedic Surgery/Bioengineering) won the Charles S. Neer Award for Excellence in Basic Science Research from the American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeons (for the second time), and Dennis Discher (Mechanical Engineering) went to the White House to receive a prestigious PECASE -- Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. There were continued successes in grant awards: Leif Finkel (Bioengineering) led an interschool group that won a prestigious 5 year Packard Foundation Interdisciplinary Award ($1m). A second Packard Award went to Kwabena Boahen (Bioengineering; $625k) for research in neuroengineering. Fred Kaplan (Orthopaedic Surgery), who is the world's leading authority on Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP), a devastating skeletal disorder, received many awards including the Sir John Chanley Award from the Arthritis Foundation, the School of Medicine Outstanding Lecturer and Distinguished Teacher Awards, the Wellcome Trust Award for Biology and Medicine, and the Royal Television Society Award for Best Scientific Documentary (BBC, London). A 5 year NIH Interdisciplinary Cardiovascular Training Grant, one of the first in the country, was awarded (P.I. Peter Davies; $922K) to support 8 Research Fellows, and individual NIH, NSF and Foundation grants to nine IME Faculty increased to well over $4m/year. In 1998-1999, the IME faculty moved up from 15th to 7th of sixteen Medical School Institutes and Centers in grant activity and were ranked number two in the rate of increased awards. This year, grant awards have nearly doubled again.
In March, Bill Kelley, M.D., a Dean of extraordinary vision who crafted the rise of Penn Medical School and Hospitals into the top three nationally during the past ten years, stepped down as Dean/CEO. His successor, Peter Traber, M.D., left Penn this summer to join GlaxoSmithKline, and Arthur K. Asbury, M.D., is now Interim Dean of the School of Medicine. A national search is planned for a Dean/CEO who will steer the school to financial stability during these turbulent times in healthcare resource management. For all Medical School units, Academic Development Funds allocated to new faculty recruitment remain highly restricted. However, Medical School commitments to the IME remain firm, allowing us to consolidate after a period of rapid growth. Grants activities continue to increase, and new initiatives with both the Engineering School and the Pathology department will facilitate modest expansion.
In the School of Engineering, Eduardo Glandt, Ph.D. was appointed Dean following a year as Interim Dean and has committed considerable efforts to two of the School's primary thrusts: - Biomedical Engineering and Computer and Informational Sciences. This is a welcome development for the multidisciplinary science in which the IME is engaged. It has allowed the reactivation of a Whitaker Foundation Leadership application by new Bioengineering Chair (and IME Faculty) Daniel Hammer, Ph.D. The university has committed considerable matching funds for the Whitaker Initiative to construct a new building for the Department of Bioengineering and to further develop education and research programs. A critical component of the Leadership Award proposal is enhanced Bioengineering interactions with the School of Medicine through the IME. A site visit by the Foundation is scheduled for October.
The IME has welcomed some new Members. Several Members left Penn including David Weitz (Physics) who moved to Harvard, Peter Lloyd Jones (CHOP) who moved to the University of Colorado, and Tom Kleyman (Medicine) who will become Chief of the Renal Division at the University of Pittsburgh in the Fall. In the administrative office, Karen Grasse, who played a key organizational role in the establishment and early development of the institute, moved to the Office of Faculty Affairs in the School of Medicine. We are extremely grateful for her tireless efforts on behalf of the IME and wish her well in her new position.
A most unexpected and wrenching loss this year was the sudden illness and death in June of Chris Overton, Ph.D., Founding Director of the Center for Bioinformatics. Chris was a wonderful colleague and friend who will be sadly missed.
An experimental pilot course "Clinical Preceptorships in Biomedical Engineering" was tested in the spring semester. Several senior and junior undergraduates in Bioengineering participated. Organized by Peter Davies and Mitch Litt, the course exposes students to Bioengineering-related applications and challenges in Clinical Medicine. This is the first formal course in the country to provide in-depth exposure of real-life clinical medicine to engineering undergraduates.
It is impossible to pick up Nature, Science, or other prominent journals these days without reading about multidisciplinary science as the future of biomedicine and technology. Stanford, Harvard, UCSF/Berkeley, Yale, and a host of other major universities have announced plans to make interdisciplinary research and education a centerpiece of their future, often facilitated by major philanthropic donations. The current national expansion of bioengineering facilitated by the Whitaker Foundation adds to these important developments. Less in the public eye, however, is the leadership position that Penn took in the early and mid-90s through President Rodin's "Agenda for Excellence" strategic plan that committed an interdisciplinary infrastructure to Penn. It was quickly implemented through new initiatives that include the IME, the Center for Bioinformatics, the Center for Bioethics, the Institute on Aging, and Departments of Molecular and Cellular Engineering, and Epidemiology and Biostatistics. These supplemented strong existing multidisciplinary units in Bioengineering, the Laboratory for Research on the Structure of Matter; the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science; the Pennsylvania Muscle Institute; and the Institute for Human Gene Therapy. As a result, Penn now has one of the most extensive multidisciplinary infrastructures in the world, representing an estimated $200m+ investment. While individual entities - the institutes, departments and centers - are highly regarded in the academic world, the university-wide cohesive interactions at Penn are less apparent to the outside world. This gap concerned me enough to propose to Provost Barchi that Penn's interdisciplinary biological engineering efforts be united under a "virtual" web-based common umbrella; Dr. Barchi agreed, and thus was born the Biological Engineering Network, B.E.N.@ Penn, a website that links multidisciplinary bioscience components at Penn through a complex network of cross-school, cross-department, and cross-institute cooperation in biological engineering research and education. The website will be fully constructed by September and can be accessed here.
Three areas in particular are responsible for increased national interest in multidisciplinary bioscience. First, completion of the Human Genome Project as a basis for functional genomics and proteomics; second, tissue engineering, where major strides in stem cell biology combined with polymer engineering promise significant advances; and third, nanotechnology engineering applied to biomedicine. The first two are well represented in IME central activities; developments of nanotechnology in Engineering, Physics, and the Pennsylvania Muscle Institute are increasingly leading towards biomedical applications.
In a relatively short period, interdisciplinary approaches to research and education have gained worldwide acceptance, led by U.S. efforts. The challenge, particularly in training, is to increase breadth of knowledge without compromise of depth and rigor, a challenge that requires very talented students and faculty. Fortunately Penn is blessed with both.
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