What were the projects that you worked on as a student and inspired you to learn more about Biology?

My first project was on computational modeling of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) of patients scheduled to receive AAA repair surgery. We made morphological reconstructions from the patient's images and computational models of the blood flow inside the AAA. We calculated the stress and strain distributions on their aneurysms with the fluid models. And after the surgery, we measured the mechanical properties of the AAA removed during the repair surgery to obtain properties such as Young's modulus and the rupture stress. These parameters were later compared with the stress and strain distribution to define the risk of rupture for that specific patient, even though they had already received the repair surgery. Since AAA repair surgeries are very risky, ideally, we wanted to know the risk of rupture. During my master's, we implemented this test in nine patients, partly because computers back then were extremely slow relative to now. I can only imagine what can be done with the computers available nowadays. Before this, during my undergrad, I worked on a mass transport model to optimize the dialysis time of patients. Hemodialysis is a treatment that removes metabolic waste and water from the blood in people with acute or chronic kidney failure. At that time, the hemodialysis time was defined based on the difference between the patient’s weight at the beginning of the session and the predefined dry weight for the same patient. Basically, the hemodialysis time was calculated as the time required to remove the excess water without considering the other metabolites that needed to be removed during the procedure. We developed a model based on bilirubin clearance to define the optimal time for dialysis. Bilirubin is a yellowish metabolite, which in part gives the yellow color to urine and is produced from the degradation of hemoglobin. The hemoglobin from red blood cells is constantly destroyed as red cells complete their life cycle, and a set amount of bilirubin is produced daily. Bilirubin is usually excreted by the kidneys. The project ended by defining a color metric to measure bilirubin in the dialysis fluid, and when bilirubin was mainly removed from the dialysis fluid, the hemodialysis could stop then. The proposed solution allowed for optimization of hemodialysis session time.

When I started my Ph.D. project, Colombia was almost in a civil war. The government created a program that supported making artificial blood as many people were dying due to bleeding and lack of blood availability. And keep in mind that Colombia is mostly a jungle, and there is no easy access to electricity or refrigeration. So, we had to come up with something that could be used in the hot and unfriendly battlefield environment. Blood was not practical there; thus, we had the idea of making a fully synthetic oxygen carrier, which was a very ambitious idea at the time. We successfully created a clean facility and made an emulsion that was able to dissolve and transport 20 times more oxygen than water. We were able to replace blood with this emulsion in rats and confirmed that it transported oxygen to tissues and supported life. However, one of the limitations of the oxygen-carrying emulsion was that it only dissolved oxygen proportional to the oxygen concentration in the lungs.

What are your long term goals as a professor at UCSD?

I always try to become a better teacher and inspire my students to think about the class topics. It’s not about how much you teach, it’s about how much of the material stays with the students after the class is over. I find motivation and passion as crucial factors in supporting the learning experience; they keep us going without giving up and promote curiosity to keep asking questions.

What are some of the important skills that you think bioengineers should possess?

Common sense and logic, and applying your knowledge to your everyday life and problems. Being able to find a way to apply what is taught in the classroom. Sometimes as professors, we don’t make a big effort to explain how the teaching material can be applied to practical problems. However, the learning process is significantly more fun and rewarding when you can make valuable practical connections between the theory and the practice.

As an educator, what do you think is the purpose of higher education? Is it merely an economic signal for employers to sort out highly-skilled laborers?

The purpose of higher education is to further expand people's skills. The joy and the satisfaction that people get after learning and applying new skills to topics they are interested in is the best way to promote learning.

It seems that students sometimes have difficulties transitioning from academia to industry.

Are there any plans to bridge this gap within the department, perhaps through more interactions with biomedical industries?

Bioengineering is being taught more theoretical than practical now, and it is challenging for the students to know how to apply the equations, concepts, and knowledge to specific situations. But the department is working on having more interaction with the local companies and industries to support student internships and facilitate the transition to industry and support the needs of the local biotech community. The priorities of academia are very different from the priorities of the industries. These internships are an excellent opportunity for students to learn the language that the companies want to hear and to apply what they have learned.

What do you think is the next “big thing” in the field of bioengineering?

Bioengineering is being recognized more and more every day, but one of the big things growing very quickly is personalized medicine. In the past, medical doctors always followed the same recipe/procedure for all the patients, but this method does not necessarily work for everyone. Finding the root cause of a specific problem for a particular individual could take many years, but with the help of more detailed and personalized tests, the doctor now can get to a diagnosis much faster and treat the cause of the problem and not only the symptoms.

One of the biggest challenges for bioengineering now is to help reduce the cost and increase the accessibility of personalized medicine. Thus, everyone will get access to rapid and complete diagnostic tests, not only the people who have more resources.