Faculty Profile: On a fast track to hit his newest personal goal
 Professor Kenneth McLeod, chair of the Bioengineering Department

The clock is ticking on Kenneth McLeod.

Though in good health, McLeod, who was recruited last summer to launch Binghamton's new graduate and undergraduate bioengineering programs, has only about 10 years left to accomplish his goals here.

That's because he subscribes to a life strategy he calls "The 15-Year-Plan."

Kenneth McLeod, who directs the University's new bioengineering program, believes the curriculum needs to take a radically different approach from the way similar programs were designed in the past.

"Do something for 15 years and by then you've probably pushed out all your good ideas," he explained. "What your brain really needs is a sea change. At that point, you could, of course, keep doing it. But if you don't want to totally burn out, you've really got to force your brain to learn a whole new set of things and move on."

Coming from McLeod, this is unquestionably "do-as-I-do" advice. Though he quite happily began his career as an electrical engineer in the automotive industry, he didn't think twice about moving on when General Motors sent him to graduate school at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1970s. GM was hoping to improve parts inspection by developing machines that could "see," but it was McLeod who ended up with a new vision.

McLeod, who had detached retinas as a child, along with permanent hearing loss in one ear from childhood mumps, thinks he was primed to have his interest piqued by the study of human physiology at MIT.

"At the time, the thinking was that, to learn how to make machines that could 'see,' you'd have to study the human visual system," he said. "That philosophy has changed since then. But, as it turned out for me, I got all caught up in the physiology, and I never did go back to industry."

Instead, he began working to enhance his understanding of physiology and medicine, without ever losing his training or perspective as an engineer.

That meant obtaining his PhD from MIT, doing post-doctoral research at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston and then advancing through a series of increasingly prestigious faculty appointments at SUNY Stony Brook's School of Medicine and College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, before accepting the challenge of building a bioengineering program at Binghamton University. It's a journey that has spanned 20 years and has made him a top researcher in a wide range of fields, including cancer, osteoporosis, tissue engineering, and preventive and reparative medicine.

"For 15 of those 20 years, I was very focused on being the typical scientist," he said. That is, he spent most of his time writing research grants, doing research and publishing papers. For the past five years, McLeod has focused on redefining engineering education in the United States.

By his own calculation, that gives McLeod about 10 years before his supply of good ideas for bioengineering curriculum development are exhausted. He plans to make the most of it. He is determined to leave behind a legacy that will help Binghamton bioengineering students obtain the kind of education -- both focused and broad-based -- that will prepare them to easily follow in his footsteps when it comes to professional "sea change."

"I don't want our students to live their lives feeling that they have to get a job and hold onto that job," McLeod said. "Because that is not the future.

"I don't want to restrict them to some tiny skill set so that when that industry collapses, they don't know what to do. I want them to know that because they are bold enough and confident enough to start from scratch, they have the ability to solve complex, ill-defined problems across the disciplines. That's what engineers do. They come up with de novo designs that make the world we live in a better, safer place."

-- Susan E. Barker

Bioengineering: the degree of the future

Engineering education in the United States has remained essentially unchanged since 1946, suggests William Wulf, president of the National Academy of Engineering, in an article in Issues in Science and Technology. A report by the National Academy of Science likewise concludes that biology education in the United States is woefully behind the times, training students to function in the world of the 1960s rather than in the world of biotechnology.

"It's a serious problem," agreed Kenneth McLeod. "We are educating our engineers for a manufacturing economy that no longer exists. When it comes to biology, across the United States, we're basically telling students, 'Let's go out and observe animals in the forest, or find a novel gene.' That's great. It's good to have a people who do observational science. But you can't train the bulk of people as if that's what they're going to do.

"An understanding of biology requires an understanding of complex systems, and that requires a strong foundation in the quantitative sciences."

McLeod said he came to Binghamton because he saw the potential to develop a program that provides students with the requisite systemic perspective.

"In my view, perhaps the most dangerous bioengineering program design would be one that required students to take two courses in mechanical engineering, two in electrical engineering, two in chemical engineering, two in computer science and then some biology," McLeod said. "Now they don't know anything well, and potential employers will view the graduate as a dilettante."

McLeod wants students in the Binghamton program to gain the skills and the education they need to handle all the 21st century has to throw at them.

"They're going to have great communication skills, great writing skills," he said. "They're going to know how to tackle ill-defined problems. They're going to be comfortable in the physical world, and they're going to be comfortable in the world of biology, which is going to be very important in the future. These people are really going to be the consummate problem solvers. That's why I see this as the sine qua non major of the 21st century."

 

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