A scientific revolution lies at the interface of biomedical science and engineering, where emerging technology, interventions, and therapeutics will evolve and expand to improve human health.

Now, a new joint initiative between Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and McCormick School of Engineering aims to steer the development of new research “neighborhoods” on Northwestern’s Chicago campus. These neighborhoods, shared physical spaces between the two schools, would serve to enhance interdisciplinary collaboration among medical and engineering faculty, trainees, and students and create a Feinberg- McCormick nexus designed to expand existing partnerships and programs. The ideal location for these neighborhoods is in the phase two research tower above the Louis A. Simpson and Kimberly K. Querrey Biomedical Research Center. This tower is in the planning stage.

Accelerating biomedical research and developing new healthcare innovations are mission critical goals, as well as promoting research collaborations, professional development, and educational opportunities.

“A key part of this initiative has been both creating a collaborative environment and bringing together faculty with different perspectives who can learn from each other and how we can use that as an exciting new area to train the next generation of medical engineers,” said Rex Chisholm, PhD, the Adam and Richard T. Lind Professor of Medical Genetics and vice dean for Scientific Affairs and Graduate Education at Feinberg.

“While plans for building the research tower are not yet finalized, adding floors to the existing Simpson Querrey Biomedical Research Center would provide ample space for a deep well of interdisciplinary research on the Chicago campus like those imaged in nexus neighborhoods,” Chisholm said.

The research neighborhoods will ultimately foster new collaborations between Feinberg and McCormick faculty that will support them in developing novel bioengineering methods and exploiting them across biomedical applications to transform healthcare knowledge and practice, said Richard Lueptow, ScD, senior associate dean and professor of Mechanical Engineering at McCormick.

“Engineers and medical life sciences researchers have complementary viewpoints and approaches to research, so we view this initiative as being a way of expanding this in a significant manner by more intentionally pulling people together into neighborhoods of collaboration where they can benefit from the engineering approach and the life sciences approach,” Lueptow said. “This initiative really sets the stage for collaborative groups from McCormick and Feinberg to form and to make significant progress rather than on the ad hoc basis that it has been up to this point. This is a natural outcome of all those collaborations that we already have.”

Enhanced collaborations will also offer mutual support for Feinberg and McCormick faculty members, expand access to shared research equipment at Northwestern’s Chicago and Evanston campuses, and encourage more cross-campus faculty events that offer opportunities for networking, professional development, and strategic planning.

“Collaboration moves much faster if students and faculty have a shared space where they can seamlessly meet and interact,” said Yogesh Goyal, PhD, assistant professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at Feinberg, of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at McCormick, and a member of the initiative’s task force. “A lot of these interactions happen over coffee or over a lunch break, and having students and faculty from McCormick and Feinberg in a shared space will make these accidental interactions happen a lot more frequently.”

Collaboration moves much faster if students and faculty have a shared space where they can seamlessly meet and interact.

Yogesh Goyal, PhD

IMAGING NEW NEIGHBORHOODS  

Potential collaborations enabled by the new initiative will explore the intersection of engineering and medicine in promising fields such as synthetic immuno-engineering, syn[bio] electronics, cellular and organoid systems engineering, neural systems engineering, and engineering for precision cardiovascular medicine.

• SYNTHETIC IMMUNO-ENGINEERING integrates principles from medicine (immunology, genetics, and cell biology) with engineering (systems modeling, control, and molecular and cellular synthetic biology) to design immune systems with enhanced precision and effectiveness. Scientists may engineer immune cells to target specific pathogens or tumors or develop synthetic vaccines that offer rapid response to diseases, potentially reshaping the landscape of healthcare.

• SYN[BIO] ELECTRONICS represents the intersection of silicon electronics with engineered biological systems to create the future of medical devices that improve the healthspan. Combining principles from electronics, bioengineering, and medicine, implantable syn[bio] electronic devices will be used to monitor and respond to dynamically changing health conditions.

• CELLULAR AND ORGANOID SYSTEMS ENGINEERING unites concepts from medicine (genomics, cellular reprogramming, developmental biology, microbiomes, precision diagnostics, and 3D tissue culture) with those from engineering (synthetic biology, protein and RNA engineering, developmental pathway rewiring, genome engineering, cellular population engineering, lab-on-a-chip, and automated experimentation) to create new approaches for medical treatments. A key feature of cellular systems engineering is that it is multidisciplinary with an emphasis on predictive design, allowing programmable medicines to be developed faster and cheaper than previously possible.

• CELL REPROGRAMMING FOR LONGEVITY advances the ability to measure and manipulate basic cell biologic function and holds the promise of transforming our understanding of aging and human longevity. Common to many disease processes affecting longevity are genetic and epigenetic alterations that affect disease processes such as cancer, organ failure, neurodegeneration, and senescence, among others. Development of novel engineering approaches to evaluate and reverse these alterations will therefore transform human health, allowing us to not only live longer, but to live longer well.

• NEURAL SYSTEMS ENGINEERING improves our understanding ofneural function and supports thedevelopment of novel neural rehabilitationand regeneration therapies.Development of the next generationof neuroscience technologies requiresteams of neuroscientists collaboratingwith investigators from across engineeringdisciplines including bioelectronics,imaging, materials science,regenerative medicine, and robotics.

• ENGINEERING FOR PRECISION CARDIOVASCULAR MEDICINE holds the potential to transform how cardiac disorders are treated. Development of a battery of tools (including imaging, bioelectronics, regenerative medicine, metabolics, and genomics) to measure and manipulate multiple aspects of cardiac function will enable clinicians to precisely tailor therapeutic interventions to treat an individual’s cardiac dysfunction, maximizing functional outcomes and minimizing complications.

BUILDING ON SUCCESSFUL PARTNERSHIPS

The current initiative also mirrors templates of other successful Feinberg-McCormick partnerships, including Northwestern’s Center for Synthetic Biology, the Center for Advanced Regenerative Engineering, the Center for Physical Genomics and Engineering, the Center for Engineering in Vision and Ophthalmology, the Center for Innovation in Global Health Technologies, the Center for Engineering and Health, and the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics.

“Northwestern is a very visionary place. This initiative is about understanding how we can merge those two worlds of engineering and medicine to promote the next wave of innovation in those areas,” said Julius Lucks, PhD, professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at McCormick and co-director of the Center for Synthetic Biology, who is also a member of the initiative’s task force.

The initiative also expands on Feinberg’s current research priorities, which include synthetic biology and therapeutic development, and overlaps with McCormick’s new strategic vision, which aims to transform engineering methods education and advance critical applications of engineering through new work in multiple areas, including biohybrid systems and optimizing the human health span.

“Engineers like to solve challenging problems, and there’s lots of challenging problems in healthcare and biosciences,” said Matthew Tresch, PhD, chair of Biomedical Engineering at McCormick and a professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Feinberg, who is a member of the initiative’s task force. “I think this cross-fertilization really stems from the excitement of expanding this partnership, by colocalizing people with complementary expertise, disciplines, and ways of thinking so that there’s opportunities that you wouldn’t find otherwise, and then using the successes that we have already in hand as templates that we can build upon as we go forward with this.”

Northwestern is a very visionary place. This initiative is about understanding how we can merge those two worlds of engineering and medicine to promote the next wave of innovation in those areas.

Julius Lucks, PhD

The initiative will also encourage more graduate students from McCormick to visit Feinberg’s Chicago campus and take advantage of educational and training opportunities with Feinberg students and faculty, as well as accelerate recruitment of new faculty at both schools.

“A lot of graduate students are really excited about combining advances in engineering, whether it’s mathematical modeling or machine learning or device engineering, and seeing opportunities where they can bring those into the life sciences, either for basic research or for clinical applications,” Rocklin said.

“The better we can build those faculty connections then will students have the opportunity to take advantage of those collaborations and also be trained more broadly and not just in one discipline.”

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