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HOW WE TEACH

A new paradigm for graduate research and training in the biomedical sciences and engineering

¹ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Texas
² Department of Mathematics, Texas A&M University, Texas
³ Department of Medical Physiology, Texas A&M University System Health Science Center, Texas
⁴ Department of Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas

Address for reprint requests and other correspondence: J. D. Humphrey, Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, 337 Zachry Engineering Center, 3120 TAMU, Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX 77843-3120 (e-mail: jhumphrey{at}tamu.edu)

98Emphasis on the individual investigator has fostered discovery for centuries, yet it is now recognized that the complexity of problems in the biomedical sciences and engineering requires collaborative efforts from individuals having diverse training and expertise. Various approaches can facilitate interdisciplinary interactions, but we submit that there is a critical need for a new educational paradigm for the way that we train biomedical engineers, life scientists, and mathematicians. We cannot continue to train graduate students in isolation within single disciplines, nor can we ask any one individual to learn all the essentials of biology, engineering, and mathematics. We must transform how students are trained and incorporate how real-world research and development are done–in diverse, interdisciplinary teams. Our fundamental vision is to create an innovative paradigm for graduate research and training that yields a new generation of biomedical engineers, life scientists, and mathematicians that is more diverse and that embraces and actively pursues a truly interdisciplinary, team-based approach to research based on a known benefit and mutual respect. In this paper, we describe our attempt to accomplish this via focused training in biomechanics, biomedical optics, mathematics, mechanobiology, and physiology. The overall approach is applicable, however, to most areas of biomedical research.

Key words: team science; interdisciplinary education; integrative curriculum

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