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The University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering (CSE) has long been a formidable force when it comes to affecting health outcomes.
For instance, the high-performing computing systems that process much of the data that drive today’s smart tools and technology in healthcare and medical products have strong roots in this college. Seymour Cray, called “the father of supercomputing,” earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1949, then a master’s in applied mathematics in 1951.
Earl Bakken, another alum- nus, gave us the first transis- torized cardiac pacemaker in 1957 and founded Medtronic, where more than 1,000 CSE alumni currently work. Henry Buchwald, who spent more than 50 years on campus as a pro- fessor of surgery and biomedical engineering, developed the first implantable infusion pump—a precursor to those in use across the world today.
“In Minnesota, we were always ahead of the times,” said University of Minnesota Professor Art Erdman.
“We had a high-tech community when I started, as well as folks who could move from that side of things into the medical side,” said Erdman, the Richard C. Jordan Professor of Mechanical Engineering and founding director of the Earl E. Bakken Medical Devices Center, who started his career at the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering in 1971. “We were also ahead of most other universities in teaming. Innovation is all about relationships and putting together cross-functional teams that are focused and have the same values.”
Today, that collaborative spirit and technological savvy continues.
In CSE, more engineers—like Erdman, who played a key role in the first-of-its-kind low-cost ventilator—and doctors thrive together. The right infrastructure is one reason. The University’s medical school is literally across the street from engineering and science buildings on campus.
Another reason is that federal funding agencies, like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, are increasingly encouraging this collaboration across disciplines.
“I think medicine is one of the biggest frontiers for engineering,” said University of Minnesota Professor Tay Netoff.
“Medicine for engineering is what the space race was 50 years ago,” said Netoff, who has been on the Department of Biomedical Engineering faculty since 2006. “These are two well-established fields coming together, and we’ve seen a lot of successes.”
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Plus, see this illustration for CSE work across the human body.
“The people we bring together at this college are amazing. They're making advances, and the impact is real. Health and wellness, or longevity, is about ‘how do we have more years of living well?”
—Joe Konstan, CSE associate dean for research