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MIT Certifies Biological Engineering Major
chrisd writes "In same week that Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney reitereates his opposition to stem cell research, MIT has certified its first new major in 29 years, Biological Engineering. The boston globe has a solid writeup about the biotech major."
The name's Sinister. Mr. Sinister. Specializing in mutations.
This is fascinating, but the writeup is pure flamebait. I know most geeks are atheists who don't grock all this "religion", but we'd do better to ignore the religious types who won't have any part in the future anyway. This stuff will just move to Singapore or the like as the backwards people oppose it. I'm studying neuroscience, and I have more problems with rat-rights or monkey-rights people (who may be in a different political party).
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Romney said last week he favors allowing research on existing embryonic stem cells taken from embryos that would otherwise be discarded by fertility clinics , but he would seek to outlaw the creation of embryos specifically for research.
''Lofty goals do not justify the creation of life for experimentation and destruction," Romney wrote in a letter to Senate President Robert E. Travaglini.
All MIT geeks rushed to change their major in the hopes that they could engineer the perfect female obje^H^H^H^H companion that would get them laid.
This would have been a degree that I would have been interested in. This is a field that has a whole lot of growth potential. Hopefully with students flocking to this profession we will see some major innovation.
I for one welcome our genetic engineering overlords.
now lets get on that woodchuck problem
air and light and time and space
This is one of the technologies that really do scare me. But I'm excited to see it moving forward
Pretty Pictures!
It says (right in the headline!) that BME is a minor, and BE might become a major.
Hmm...starting your article with a misleading flamewar rant against a politician? It's right on par with Slashdot's level of professionalism.
Georgia Tech has had Biomedical Engineering offered as a major for a few years now. It's a pretty popular new major.
And emotional. That's what's dangerous.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
I am suprised that MIT is so carefull with their
g -D ivision/index.htm
majors...
OK how long until I can download the rest of the course...
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Biological-Engineerin
The writeup calls this biological engineering major a biotech major. While there is some overlap between these two, there are also some fundamental differences.
Biotech includes many fields from the bioinformatics domain (gene chips, protein folding, sequence analysis)--while this major focuses on the engineering aspects of biology. Read up on the definitions to learn the differences, which are going to be key to know in the 21st century!
For those who want to start early to get ready for this, check out DNAhack, the website for amateur genetic engineering.
Will leave both the religious and new-age types behind.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
So, MIT is essentially doing what Rice, SUNY Stony Brook, Lehigh, Rice, Syracuse, and even Mesa Community College have been doing for a very long time now?
Yes, this is MIT, and they have a potential to become the leading institution in the field, but respected universites have already established programs. When MIT comes out with something revolutionary from their new program, then I'll be interested.
"[T]he single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom." -- Barry Goldwater
Wired: Student Clones
http://news.newkerala.com/health-news-india/?actio n=fullnews&id=67718
showed usefulness. Creating absolutely no moral dilemmas. And it got oh so much press ink.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Why not have the Biology Majors take engineering classes as electives, or the engineering students take Biology as an elective. This new major just adds more the the bureaucracy.
I have a question, I am seriously, honestly just looking for more knowledge about this.
Leaving aside your religious or personal beliefs about the rights of stem cells and embryos, about which reasonable people can disagree... and about whether federal funding should pay for something versus should it be allowed at all (another entirely lively discussion)... is it true that there is a double standard for fertility clinics?
I have been reading about fertility clinic procedures that involve activities with embryos, on quite a large scale, that should seem objectionable to RtL advocates concerned with stem cell research. But I don't perceive the same kind of advocacy against IVF activities that result in the destruction of microscopic life, as I do against stem cell research.
I am not a doctor. I know that IVF involves harvesting eggs and fertilizing them en masse, then transplanting a few back to the mother and discarding the rest.
So:
Assuming you consider microscopic human life sacred, is this morally distinguishable somehow from stem cell research?
Is it actually the case that RtL advocates do oppose IVF as much as stem cell research?
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I'd like to mention at this point that the "ban on stem-cell research" that so many people get worked up about, doesn't exist. There is nothing saying "don't do that" (it's being done). There is nothing saying "don't start any new embryonic stem cell lines for research" (anyone who wants to, can). There is nothing saying "The federal government (US) won't pay for embrionic stem cell research" (they do). What the US government won't pay for is for any additional embrionic stem cell lines to be created for research.
While it's all well and good to disagree with various politicians on a topic or two, people are pretending there's an outright ban on something, when it's really a "we won't pay you to do (thing) in (mode) with (condition)" situation.
That is?
Transcend Humanity. Please.
"I didn't go to college, and look at me...I'm kick-ass." - Jack Black, Orange County
www.kiwilyrics.com - a wiki for lyrics
by making it a cloning class project that each geek makes 100,000 TAX PAYING copies of himself. Of course these geek clones would need high paying tech jobs. So they would need to engineer a virus that would kill offshore engineers....OK let's forget this idea
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
in increasing numbers...That is, we have had a net exodus of skilled workers, even though we have the schools that train them and a contingent of biotech powerhouses [Biogen, Genzyme, Millenium Pharm. etc] and start-ups that many states would be happy to host. Most people in high tech in MA. groaned when Mitt's misguided missive hit the news last night. I only see this accelerating the departure of companies and jobs for more hospitable climates. I wonder at what point these policies, whatever their actual impact on what reasearch is legal, will create a perception that Mass is yet another state in the hands of American Ayatollahs, a place for thinking people to shun.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
But the same types will want to ban it for everyone. Government funding for abortion will be cut before the procedure is banned as well. My libertarian leanings say getting government out of it is good, but the banning comes later.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
A line from TFA: At the same time, the government, which funds most scientific research in the country,
Does anyone else see something fundamentally wrong with that? I agree that the government should play a LIMITED role in R&D ie financing the stuff that nobody else is willing to take the risk and finance, but there is somethin fundamentally wrong with this country when the government needs to finance most of the scientific research in this country.
What ever happened to private R&D? Or is this just a symptom of the long term wrath of Carly Fiorna's, Sam Walton's, and Micheal Dell's actions: You don't need to make stuff, just market stuff. That is how you will get rich!
Dangerous precedent IMO.
Monstar L
Call it what you want but until they develop a reliable, reproducible, and generally accepted set of practices they still aren't engineers.
Skillfull and amazing, yes. Artisans maybe.
Engineers no.
It's the same reason ABET doesn't certify software engineering; it's still more art than science. Good engineering is science, great engineering is scientific artistry.
I've been on slashdot so long I'm starting to get out of touch with the cool stuff if it ain't on slashdot.
Great, like we need -more- god complexes running around MIT...
While the Globe's writeup may be "solid", it implies that a new major ("course") was created 29 years ago, and that's misleading. Yeah, like anybody here cares. But "Linguistics and Philosophy" was just a merger of the pre-existing "Linguistics" and "Philosophy" departments, each with their own major ("course"). Philosophy was 24, I don't remember what Linguistics was. The last completely new major was, I think, well before then.
It's a collaboration between Vanderbilt, Northwestern, Texas, and Harvard/MIT, using a $10mill NIH grant, to establish a curriculum for Biomedical/Biological Engineering. Vanderbilt is leading the group, mostly because of the fine Peabody School of Education that is part of the university, and I interned over one summer with the group ('02 graduate with a BE in BME). vanth.org]
MIT is obviously one of the biggest engineering schools in North America, but it should be noted that my school has had a Biological Engineering Program for quite some time.
Don't get me wrong, good on MIT for adding this new major, but it should be noted that others have already done so.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
MIT's not alone in looking into biological engineering, either. SUNY at Buffalo's chemical engineering department changed its name to 'chemical and biological' engineering last year. While there haven't been any curriculum changes yet, I'm told that they'll start arriving once folks get a handle on what a biological engineering curriculum should look like.
Stem cell research is bad!
Now what did I do with my rubber gloves?
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Personally, I'd like to see course 19 continue as the "Lost Major", and see this one given number 25. (Thats what they're up to now, right?)
-Aaron, Course 6.
Bio-engineering and Computer Technology?
"nice prototype, what do you call it?"
"T1000, it's capable lifting heavy weights, demolition and governing California"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Boston U, which is right next door to MIT, has had a BioEng program for some time. Why no article for them?
They tend to be the same one hugging trees. Just one example of many: http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?web cat=features&enewsid=4839 .
Transcend Humanity. Please.
BioE is a common major among colleges today - at my college, Cal, we have had it for a while now.
And actually, the major has nothing to do with crossing humans with birds and horses to produce a flying centaur (at the UG level anyways haha).
It is more of a 'process' major, whereby they learn a little of everything - most of my BioE friends tell me they feel like they aren't learning too much actually (and we rank pretty high in it too!) because there are few opportunities for depth. In fact, many EECS classes are crosslisted as BioE classes so that BioE ppl can get some sort of priority in getting into those classes - mainly because otherwise they wouldn't know shit.
Anyways, the courses involved are actually rather random - there is one called topics in genomics, one called intro to bioastronautics, then a bunch of those EECS-crosslisted classes, and so on.
I imagine that graduate students in BioE will HAVE to have major experience in a different field or else they wouldn't be able to do that much.
I am a Bioengineering Major at Binghamton University, class of 2006(the first class to be offered). I chose it over Computer Engineering, and I don't regret it. I have gotten to learn a lot of really new stuff; many of our classes have no textbooks because the material is so new. THe only real difficulty is finding a job...employers aren't looking for bioengineers directly. I can easily get into research, but I kinda want to spread my wings and fly first.
On one hand, Bush must be anxious to let companies bring in foreign biological engineers to keep any American from being employed as such. But on the other hand, as a radical right wing Christian, he doesn't believe in biology, so he must also want to keep them out of the country.
But then again, both of these scenarios assume that Bush actually keeps abreast of the news, which is a pretty ridiculous proposition in itself.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Err I didn't realize Biology was only stem cell research, learn something new everyday...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
they discovered that even artificial chicks prefer Foodball player to band geeks!
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
The students first project will be to put bamboo genes into marijuana plants. Once they succeed, their their tuition fees will be paid for the rest of their time at MIT.
Who certified the faculty of Biological Engineering so that they can hand out degrees in Biological Engineering? (Do they have pass the academic frown test of their peers or do they just order their own degree from a PO box in New Mexico?)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Open Sores technology?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Humans are animals. Language affects thought, and if we keep implying humans aren't animals, we'll get nowhere.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
So what?
Did the poster bother to read the link he supplied? That degree has nothing to do with stem cell research.
From the link: Biomedical Engineering is the application of all types of engineering to all types of problems in clinical medicine. Biomedical Engineers develop new robotic surgery procedures, non-invasive imaging modalities, diagnostic procedures analyzing heart signals, telemedicine programs, and a range of other technologies that help diagnose and treat disease better. Biomedical Engineering includes many application areas and approaches that do not require a foundation in modern biology, and thus there are many educational and research opportunities in the various School of Engineering Departments for students who have a strong interest in clinical medicine and in engineering but only a modest interest in biology.
Also note a snippit from further in the article that the poster gave the link to: "Biological Engineering as a Discipline, Distinct from the Applied Field of Biomedical Engineering." Important distinction? naaahhhhh....
There's no inconsistency here. He's against certain types of harvesting, and MIT is making robots. Wow, definately news, stuff that matters.
"Non-human animal" works but is cumbersome. Maybe "creature" will catch on.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
It is to keep the people's minds off the absurdity of "god" creating light before he "made" stars.
And you seriously think that in the Big Bang heavy protons and neutrons to build He to build stars were created BEFORE photons/radiation/light?
Paul B.
P.S. But I agree with your "PR plot" idea...
Sort of an Uma Thurmanator.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I want to see them go after the organic-everything new-age crowd. Maybe if they object to wireless internet.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Actually, as a Biomedical Engineering at UVa right this moment, I can tell you that the field is still extremly new, and thus quite revolutionary by the very definition of the word. Just pick up the Journal of Biomedical Engineering, it's worth the read, if only just to see how phenomenal the research seems. Imagine the day when your Biomedical Engineering friend can sit down with your torn muscle and inject a polymer that repairs the damage. That's tomorrow, in today's research labs at UVa.
.. err .. 50-60 cents ;)
The pushes into this field of engineering are helping to consolidate biological advances in chemical engineering, tissue engineering, mechanical engineering (believe it or not), computer science, etc. To better enhance your view of the situation, UVa started their major officially last year, and the field quickly became one of the most competitive majors in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences out here, but for good reason.
We're ranked well, even being a pretty liberal arts related school, but this in large part due to the fact that our Medical School is extremly active in research. One of the critical distinctions our school is making is the fact that BME is regarded as a Major, and not a minor in the way MIT seems to want to do it. This is because we have no "Biological Engineering" major, mainly because Biomedical Engineering encompasses those things MIT designated as Biological Engineering, and more. Moreover, BME is regarded as a major at quite a few prestigious University's including Northwestern, UMass, UCLA, etc, so clearly MIT must be reading a different set of notes than the rest of the academic community.
Regardless, Biomedical Engineering is something that is very much important, and it's very good to see a peer institution in the market to develop smart Biomedical/Biological Engineers. Hopefully this won't be our generation's Aerospace Engineering or Nuclear Engineering. I do believe jobs will last in this field, and the potential for branching into other fields from an Undergrad Degree in BME is phenomenal (just look at the fact that BME majors have the highest acceptance rate out of any major into Medical School).
There's my
Yes, the rat-rights people will lean to the "other party" as I said. Libertarians offer a way out, at least on this issue.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Religion can do as much to damage any debate as zealotry - of any kind. I proffer the following for discourse: An naturaly (or otherwise produced) human embryo as per this discussion (oft' described as a mass of skin cells etc etc) is nothing if not a replication of dna sequences in an, as yet, indescipherable scattered adjoined pattern of parent genomes. Do we feign to know anything more than this vague assertion about what IS or IS NOT human life? Especially since in this day and age, we are no less capable of extinguishing it en-masse by proxy of techie drones and long-range missiles etc. We humans DO have a problem with learning about LIFE. We seem to have less touble in executing DEATH. Experiment? Sure, if law says okay. But is the law moral? No. Is moral argument therfore restricted to religion? Of course not. So is it Ethics that decides? (if you don't know the diff don't bother trolling) Far from dictating any 'one decision' ethics are often overlooked in this and many debates facing us all in the west, and therefore humankind by extention. Everything 'UP FOR DEBATE' is either "good" or "bad" - "black" or "white" - "with us" or "against us" etc. We can have ALL the zygotes we want to make into facile, white-bread, bird-dog morons we can devise as some kind of excuse for producing a veritable "super-mankind" but ANY world-class scientist would attest that we are simultaneously hosing our humanity down the drain if we imagine that we NOW know what we are doing. Caution in all things. This is not a religious monologue.
At Guelph University, we have had biological engineering for quite some time.
It is focuses on two streams, bioreactions, and biomedical.
The Bio-reactions would deal with:
membranes
bio reactors(beer creation!)
remediation techniques (this is a mix with enviro eng)
food creation / processing
Bio Medical:
Custom Prosethetics
Imaging technologies
Different therapies (gene, radiation, chemical, natural)
Cyborg creation 101
Android Manipulation (must be taken with AI*4503)
ect.
Guelph is largly a non traditional Engineering school, there is no Civil/mechanical/other standard engineering programs, very cool.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
This is fascinating, but the writeup is pure flamebait. I know most geeks are atheists who don't grock all this "religion", but we'd do better to ignore the religious types who won't have any part in the future anyway. This stuff will just move to Singapore or the like as the backwards people oppose it. I'm studying neuroscience, and I have more problems with rat-rights or monkey-rights people (who may be in a different political party).
Speaking of flamebait... sheesh!
Have you ever taken an ethics class? Saying that other people will commit evil to get ahead is never a justification for doing it yourself. Should we torture prisoners to get information about terrorists? Why not? Many people would object on moral grounds, but would you agree that we should "ignore the religious types who won't have any part in the future anyway?" After all, "this stuff will just move to [Syria] or the like as the backwards people oppose it."
Why don't we experiment on the homeless (or whoever else we decide not to care about currently)? What basis do your ethics have for supporting or rejecting this idea? Are humans special in your philosophy compared to animals? What makes your moral and ethical decision (which is not based on religion) any more valid than that of someone else?
(My stance on these issues is irrelevant to this; I just can't stand a blowhard whether they're a rabid fundamentalist Christian or a rabid fundamentalist Atheist who is convinced that they're views are inherently morally, ethically, and logically superior to everyone else's.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
THEY ARE BANNED BY EVIL RETHUGLICANS!
Why is it that only conservatives use made-up insults (e.g. 'DemocRATS') to describe their opponents, even when they're pretending to attack themselves? Maybe I should read more DU and less FR.
Humans are animals. That is all.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Given your sig. I have libertarian leanings, but I think of it as something for the transhuman future. When my mind is encased in electric armor, I won't mind guns too much. But for now, I'd like them off the streets.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Of course, question that all of want to know is, what Roman numeral did they give to the new course?
I think the highest existing number is Course XXIV, Linguistics and Philosophy, so presumably Biological Engineering is Course XXV... or is it?
This web page,alas, is not up-to-date.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Actually, that web page was up to date... I skipped right over it.
It is "Course BE."
How could they depart from hallowed tradition? O tempora. O mores. O mens. O manes.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Several of the engineering majors at MIT already had bio-engineering options for several decades. The most well known was option VI-2 in Electrical Engineering, but mechanical and materials science had these too. This latest development formalizes it.
I was glad to hear that we'd finally gotten a Biomedical engineering major. I have one good friend who chose to go to Harvard rather than MIT because they have a BioMedEng major and we don't.
This sig wasn't worth reading, was it.
Forget the rocket scientists, A Biological Engineer would be much more suited to find mutated Unix code in Linux.
Reason #32767 not to use VB6: Integers are 2 bytes... Think about it!
I thought 19 was Applied Mechanical Engineering? You know, with the header classes taught by professors Florey and Tetazoo?
Unfortunately, a lot of companies see very little value in any sort of basic research; any R&D being done is with the specific goal of creating a new product. Which is fine for them, I suppose... except a lot of their applied research has to build on previous research done just for the hell of it. "Useless" research has a tendancy to become essential in ways not expected before.
AFAIK, the government is the only very large organization willing to spend money on research which has no immediate economic value. I'd be thrilled to see private organizations step up to the plate, and throw money at things which won't help their profits next quarter... but I wouldn't bet on it happening any time soon.
"Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself." -Richard Feynman
This post is coming pretty late in the game, but worth a shot.
For all of the biological engineers out there, how many times have you been asked what a biological engineer is? What kind of reaction do you get after telling them? I'm a bioengineer (UofG) and I've been asked by a number of people just what exactly a biological engineer is.
Please see this. It is a sock-puppet account of Concern where he attempts to denigrate as a "political troll" anyone who looks at him funny. He added me to his "political troll" list when I pointed out that he (Concern) was violating his own troll rules.
Carnegie Mellon University has a bio-medical engineering program, with one caveat. A student can only major in it as long as they have an additional major, like mechanical, chemical or electrical engineering. I think that's a good idea, because as some people have been saying, Bio-medical is still a relatively new program and doesn't have much structure yet. http://www.cmu.edu/bme/
When uncertain, when in doubt, Run in circles, scream and shout.