The project is developing a one-semester biomedical engineering course that uses a systems bioengineering approach through collaborative and immersive wet-lab experiments and computational analyses that span different spatial scales in biology from DNA-level through organ-level. The course is filling a need in the biomedical engineering curriculum by teaching the core set of skills necessary to study biological systems in a holistic and rigorous way using quantitative systems modeling approaches and to generate the sort of high-quality experimental data needed to perform such systems analysis. The underlying theory and engineering principles (e.g. reaction rates, mass balance, etc.) and computational skills (specific modeling methodologies) are the core of the lecture material in this course. However, since the development of systems models in biology and medicine is data-driven, experimental approaches are also taught in concurrent lab sessions in the course to generate systematic high-quality data. Evaluation efforts using student surveys and formal analyses of classroom videotapes are determining the efficacy of the course in developing the knowledge and skills in the systems approach and the impact of the course on the overall curriculum. The project team is disseminating their material and data through website postings, through presentation at ASEE, BMES, and the Biophysical Society conferences, and through a 14 university network in their Partnership for Innovation project. Broader impacts include the dissemination of project results and a special focus on women engineering students.
