3ME - Modelling Methods for Medical Engineering

医学工程学正在成为工程专业的一个新前沿。未来的工程师可能会像处理钢铁或混凝土一样，处理人体组织和细胞。医学工程吸引了一大批新的有才华的人，他们看到许多最新的生物医学研究课题都存在工程问题。在基尔大学，医学科学与技术研究所(ISTM)成立于2004年，旨在弥合基础科学和技术与医学和临床实践之间的新差距。基础科学家和工程师的工作方法、术语和专业文化与医疗专业人员不同。将临床医生与能够帮助他们了解、诊断和治疗疾病的科学和技术领域联系起来往往存在困难。将基础科学项目与临床需要的相关领域联系起来也存在困难。这些困难主要是由于使用了不同的术语，缺乏空间和时间来满足。基尔的ISTM通过从长凳到床边的方法，成功地将许多基础科学家与临床医生联系起来。但ISTM已经在大学内确定了另外两个专业领域，这将有助于推进其正在进行的几个项目，特别是在通过组织工程和干细胞工程在实验室培育替代人体组织1等领域。Keele的数学建模小组使用数学建模技术来解决工业过程、生物学和人类生理学中的问题。该小组具有国际知名度，并越来越有兴趣将其专业知识应用于令人兴奋的新领域，如干细胞和细胞工程。Keele的应用和环境地球物理研究小组使用超高分辨率地球物理技术和数值模拟来研究地质特征，特别是石油储量、考古学和环境的其他方面。该集团的专长涵盖燃料电池、清洁能源、生物质利用、污染控制、废物管理、绿色化学、煤炭的清洁和创新利用，涉及世界各地的学术和商业联系。他们在创建地球上特征和空间的图像方面的专业知识同样可以应用于人体。这些科学家和临床医生决定共同组成医学工程(3Me)倡议的建模方法，试图鼓励合作，使人们能够以新的方式思考在试图开发医学工程技术时遇到的一些问题。四位教授领导了这项计划：医学工程方面的艾丽西亚·哈吉教授和乔恩·多布森教授，数学建模方面的格雷厄姆·罗杰森教授和地球物理学方面的彼得·斯泰尔斯教授。他们每个人都领导着包括其他教授、讲师、研究助理和研究生在内的研究小组，因此Keele大约有30-40名员工有兴趣参与3Me倡议。有几种方法可以在这些群体之间建立新的联系：1.快速约会和结对介绍年轻的讲师相互介绍研究。驻院研究员计划，工作人员互换角色，沉浸在新的研究文化中。他们将为同事和学生举办讲座和其他课程。问题范围研讨会，确定一系列共同感兴趣的复杂问题，并确定解决这些问题的方法。在沙坑会议上，30名选定的参与者在两天的时间里集中讨论想法，最好的想法得到了大约25,000人的支持，以帮助开发它并进行一些初步实验。会有两个这样的。背靠背研讨会：几对40分钟的研讨会，一个接一个。将从其他大学访问的访问高级研究员。

Medical Engineering is emerging as a new frontier for the engineering profession. The engineer of tomorrow may be just as likely to be working with human tissues and cells, as with steel or concrete. Medical Engineering is attracting an impressive range of new, talented individuals who see that many of the latest bio-medical research topics have engineering problems at their heart.At Keele University, the Research Institute for Science & Technology in Medicine (ISTM) was established in 2004 to bridge the gap between new advances in basic science and technology with medicine and clinical practice. Basic scientists and engineers have different methods of working, terminology and professional cultures to those working in the medical professions. There are often difficulties in linking clinicians to areas of science and technology that can help them to understand, diagnose and treat diseases. There are also difficulties in linking basic science projects to relevant areas of clinical need. Those difficulties are mainly through using different terms, lack of space and lack of time to meet. ISTM at Keele has successfully linked many basic scientists to clinicians by taking a bench to bedside approach. But ISTM has identified two further areas of expertise within the University that would help to advance several of its ongoing projects, especially in areas such as growing replacement human tissues in the laboratory through Tissue Engineering and Stem Cell Engineering.1. Keele's Mathematical Modelling Group employ mathematical modelling techniques to solve problems in industrial processes, biology and human physiology. This group has an international profile and is increasingly interested in applying its expertise to exciting new areas like stem cells and cell engineering.2. Keele's Applied and Environmental Geophysics Research Group uses ultra-high resolution geophysical techniques and numerical modelling to study features of geology, especially oil reserves, archaeology and other aspects of the environment. The group's expertise covers fuel cells, clean energy, biomass utilisation, pollution control, waste management, green chemistry, clean and innovative utilisation of coal, involving academic and commercial links throughout the world. The expertise they have in creating images of features and spaces in the earth can equally well be applied to human bodies.Together these scientists and clinicians have decided to form the Modelling Methods for Medical Engineering (3ME) Initiative to try to encourage working together, enabling new ways of thinking about some of the problems that have been encountered in trying to develop medical engineering technologies. Four Professors are leading the Initiative: Prof Alicia El Haj and Prof Jon Dobson from the Medical Engineering side, Prof Graham Rogerson from Mathemtical Modelling and Prof Peter Styles from Geophysics. They each lead research groups involving other professors, lecturers, research assistants and research students, and so there are about 30-40 staff at Keele who are interested to be involved in the 3ME Initiative. There are several ways to forge new links between those groups:1. Speed Dating and Pairing introducing young lecturers to each others research.2. Researcher in Residence scheme in which staff swap roles to immerse themselves in a new research culture. They will present lectures and other sessions to colleagues and students.3. Problem Scoping Workshops identifying a series of complex problems of mutual interest and defining approaches to tackle them.4. Sandpit meetings in which 30 selected participants discuss ideas intensively for two days, and the best idea receives around 25,000 support to help develop it and carry out some first experiments. There will be two of these.5. Back-to-Back Seminars : several pairs of 40 minute seminars, one after the other.6. Visiting Senior Research Fellows who will visit from other universities.