In its 11 years of existence, the Department of Bioengineering (DBE) has managed to build a strong structure with a transdisciplinary activity, providing a diverse curriculum offer and carrying out cutting-edge research in various fields. Through a conversation with the Department’s president, Professor João Pedro Conde, we wanted to understand the path that has been taken, the main achievements, the objectives and challenges that have arisen and those that are foreseen for the coming years.
The creation of the DBE, in 2011, is Técnico’s response to the emergence of great advances in Biology and Biomedical Sciences and their convergence with Technologies and Engineering. “At a certain point it became obvious that it was necessary to have a group of people who would work exactly in this convergence”, emphasizes the Department president. Performing with mastery the challenge of researching and teaching in this emerging area, the DBE and its people contribute daily to increasing Técnico’s visibility and international recognition in these fields.
The department is organized into 4 scientific areas. Biological Sciences; Biomaterials; Nanotechnology and Regenerative Medicine; Biomedical Systems and Biosignals; and Biomolecular and Bioprocess Engineering. “It is a challenge for us to all work in the same direction as a team because people have very different languages”, emphasizes Professor João Pedro Conde. “It is a job that has been done over the years and it is demanding for me as president, as it was for my predecessors in this position”, he adds.
At the moment, the DBE has 33 professors in its structure – one of them also affiliated with the Department of Informatics Engineering – and linked to several research centres. “The Department’s major institute is iBB, but we have people at IT, ISR, INESC-MN, and CERENA. And we are very tolerant of that, people should do research where they feel comfortable”, emphasizes Professor João Pedro Conde. As the professor emphasizes, “there are many talents at Técnico in this area that are not part of the department, which is quite typical in these new interdisciplinary areas”.
In addition to intense research and teaching activities, most professors also have an administrative role. “If we add the executive committee, the course coordinators and those responsible for the laboratories are more than 25 people”, highlights the president of the DBE.
Professor João Pedro Conde adds that “in a steady state, our objective is to have about 40 people”. If we manage to make each of these people independent and thinking, and not just have groups of people who are formatted in the same way, this number seems to us enough to have a range of talents that goes from biology to medical instrumentation and that can also ensure teaching”, emphasizes the teacher.
Diverse and high quality offer in the three cycles
The preponderance and scope of the area is reflected in the diverse training offer that the DBE has available to students, which begins right away in the 1st cycle courses: Biomedical Engineering and Biological Engineering. Biomedical Engineering manages to attract the best students in the country year after year, positioning itself at the top of the courses with the highest minimum grade at national level. “We attract great students, many of whom are inclined between Engineering and Medicine”, says Professor João Pedro Conde. “There has also been a great attraction for Biological Engineering, they are students with increasingly higher grades”, he adds.
In addition to the Master’s in Biological Engineering and the Master’s in Biomedical Engineering, the DBE also has master’s degrees in Biotechnology, Bioengineering and Nanosystems, Pharmaceutical Engineering and Microbiology. The Masters in Pharmaceutical Engineering, taught in collaboration with the Faculty of Pharmacy, is, as Professor João Pedro Conde points out, “a unique thing in the country and which always attracts many students”. In turn, the Masters in Microbiology is a joint initiative of Técnico, the Faculty of Sciences, the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Lisbon.
This year, the Master in Bioengineering: Regenerative and Precision Medicine was added to this wide range, taught at the Taguspark campus, which has already received students this school year.
At the 3rd cycle level, 3 doctoral programs are offered: Biotechnology and Biosciences, Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering. “We are thinking of putting everything together in one, and probably keeping only the PhD in bioengineering. Our perception is that perhaps it is not justified to have so many programs”, advances Professor João Pedro Conde.
If questioning the importance of Bioengineering nowadays is already difficult, Professor João Pedro Conde believes that this role will be increasingly central in the future and this will have to be reflected in the students’ own training. “We believe that modern biology, based on genomics, is an essential part of the training of an engineer that must be integrated into the basic training of our students”, he highlights.
Attracting the best national and international students to the 2nd cycle and 3rd cycle programs is one of the central points of the DBE strategy. Stressing that more and more students are attracted to continue their studies outside Portugal, Professor João Pedro Conde warns of the need to retain talent at Técnico. “If we cannot show and give students reasons to stay, we will lose our best students, we will lose our ability to intervene in Portugal, Europe and the world”, he emphasizes, sharing that the department is attentive to these issues and intends to develop initiatives related to these two points.
DBE Seminars and Open Labs help to increase interest and collaboration in the field
One of the Department’s best-known initiatives is the “DBE Seminars”, an initiative promoted by the department, with big names in the area, from within Técnico, but also from outside. Professor João Conde highlights the importance of this initiative, which seeks to promote “group spirit” allowing “people from very different areas to (…) understand what the guest speakers do”. The organization also seeks through this platform to “disseminate new subjects”, promote the exchange of ideas with other departments and launch new collaboration bridges. “We have also invited outsiders that we think could be potential candidates for the teaching position. It’s a way for us to get to know them, to get to know the work area, and their skills”, says the DBE president, assuming he is a fan of this initiative.
Another of the department’s successful initiatives is the DBE Open Laboratories, which this year return to face-to-face format. As part of this initiative, hundreds of secondary students have the opportunity to contact researchers from the Department, attend lectures and participate in small experimental demonstrations in the scientific areas of Biological Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. “Our feedback is that the Open Laboratories are above all an asset for Técnico”, emphasizes Professor João Pedro Conde. “Everyone likes it a lot and that’s why it’s an initiative to continue”, he adds.
