David Baker, Dayong Gao, Herbert Sauro named fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering

UW professors , and have been named fellows of the .

The three faculty members are among the institute’s , numbering 157 in all, chosen for their “distinguished and continuing achievements” in medical and biological engineering.

Called the AIMBE for short, the institute is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization. Its 2,000-member College of Fellows includes outstanding engineers, entrepreneurs and innovators in medical and biological engineering.

The organization advocates for the value of medical bioengineering in society. Its mission, which also drives advocacy initiatives, is to “recognize excellence, advance the public understanding and accelerate medical and biological innovation,” according to its website.

Baker is a professor of biochemistry and directs the . Gao is a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the . Sauro is a professor of bioengineering and director of the . All three have affiliate appointments in other departments as well.

Election to the institute’s College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to a medical and biological engineer; fellows include three Nobel Prize laureates and 18 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Science or National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The institute’s annual meeting, scheduled for March, was cancelled due to health concerns and the fellows were inducted remotely.

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Essay fondly remembers Ellis Goldberg, professor of political science

A researcher with the nonprofit has penned a remembrance and appreciation of , UW professor of political science, who September 20, 2019, at the age of 72.

Goldberg, a political economist and scholar of Middle East politics, was a longtime UW faculty member and former director of the Middle East Center in the Jackson School of International Studies. He also wrote a blog called “” that commented on Middle Eastern and U.S. politics.

He is remembered fondly on the Middle East research project’s website by , clinical assistant professor in Liberal Studies at New York University, in an essay titled “Ellis Goldberg, Egypt and a Reverence for Life.”

El-Ghobashy writes that Goldberg “loved Egypt and knew more about its history and political economy than anyone I know. … At a time when lives in Egypt are imperiled by deprivation, dictatorship and disease, as are so many lives across the globe, an intellectual sensibility grounded in a reverence for life is a gift and an exigency.”

With Goldberg’s death, El-Ghobashy writes, “we lost one of the most erudite, generous and original scholars of the modern Middle East and North Africa, a truly reflective mind …”  .

There were remembrances of Goldberg from the and the as well.

UW Notebook is a section of the UW News site dedicated to telling stories of the good work done by faculty and staff at the ÌìÃÀÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½. Read all posts here.

“We are delighted that the NIH has made this award,” said , a UW associate professor of bioengineering and incoming director of the center. “We believe the research at the center will enable credible models that can be used in the clinic to improve patient care.”

Other faculty involved with the center are , UW associate professor of biomedical informatics and medical education; , an assistant professor of genetics and genomic sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; , professor of cell biology at the University of Connecticut; and , a senior research fellow in bioengineering at the University of Auckland.

The Center for Reproducible Biomedical Modeling will focus on understanding, simulating and modeling different types of biological systems, from cells and organs to whole bodies. Accurate models of these biological realms are key to advancements in precision medicine and bioengineering. At the core, these models rest on understanding how our genes interact to produce the physical characteristics of our bodies — from blood and nerve cells to lungs and toes. The number and versions of genes that we each carry — known as a genotype — play a major role in determining the physical characteristics — or phenotype — of our cells, tissues, organs and bodies. But interactions between genes and our environment, as well as the complexities of human development and disease, make predicting how genotype determines phenotype no straightforward task, which is why biologists have sought to develop accurate models of this process, said Sauro.

Models and simulations that could predict phenotype from a given genotype would help scientists understand the molecular basis of behavior, help clinicians personalize therapy and help bioengineers custom-design microbes, among other applications. But historically, researchers have lacked the tools and knowledge to develop models systematically and scalably, said Sauro.

“In addition, due to a lack of comprehensive training among researchers, few of the models used today are comprehensible, reusable and reproducible,” said Sauro. “And typically, journals do not require reported models to be reusable or reproducible.”

To enable more thorough and accurate models, the center will develop technologies to aggregate biological data systematically, scalably and collaboratively — steps that should streamline the process for designing, simulating and analyzing models. These tools developed at the center will also make biological modeling more reusable and reproducible, Sauro said. To ensure these technologies advance modeling, the center will seek input from collaborators who build models across a wide range of biological domains, scales and applications.

The center will also help organize workshops for scientists to provide assistance with annotating and verifying models submitted to partner journals. The center has already engaged recruited nine partner journals for its curation and verification services.

“We hope to establish technologies and best practices for reusable, reproducible biomedical modeling, which will advance biological modeling far beyond today’s capabilities,” said Sauro.

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For more information, contact Sauro at 206-685-2119 or hsauro@uw.edu.