Abstract
The global pandemic and climate change that increasingly pervade our daily reality provide
impetus for us, as citizens of the world, scientists, engineers and clinicians, to change
paradigms, from how we approach the grand challenges facing us to how and why we do our
daily work.
There is an acute need to adapt and integrate our research and teaching and translational
efforts to effect change and positively impact the health of our worlds' inhabitants.
Universities and their faculty (the Academy) have a unique responsibility and opportunity in
this context of the health and wellbeing of our worlds' respective inhabitants, where "worlds"
include biosystems at length scales from
• our planet, and our planet's ecosystems and inhabitants, to
• our own bodies and the inhabitants of our resident organs and tissues (cells).
Key to life and its sustenance, the elucidation of mechanisms underpinning adaptation and
survival finds new imperative. This talk will set a framework to approach
• the challenge of deciphering the rules of life in our mechanobiological world and
• the impact of these natural laws on the health of our worlds' inhabitants and the
seeding of sustainable ecosystems and economies of the future.
Two case studies will be introduced through the interdisciplinary lens of science, technology,
engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM), including
• a study of the power (i.e. the amount of energy transferred or converted per unit time)
of life across length and time scales, from adaptation of transport networks, cells to
systems, bones to brains to trees, and
• an opportunity to cultivate inhabitant health, where health of ecosystems is
interdependent on health of the ecosystems' inhabitants.
The exciting opportunity and pressing responsibility for the Academy to lead societal change
through education and discovery will be highlighted with examples of current projects and
outreach efforts to effect such change.
About the Speaker
Professor Melissa Knothe Tate is the Founding Director of the Blue Mountains World Interdisciplinary Innovation Institute. She is a global thought leader in cross-disciplinary and healthcare innovation. Her R&D program is epitomized by its cross-cutting nature, where the fundamental laws of mechanics are applied to biological/medical systems to elucidate and emulate emergent and smart properties. Knothe Tate is the recipient of more than 40 honors/awards including Engineers Australia Most Innovative Engineers, the Christopher Columbus Foundation - U.S. Chamber of Commerce Chairman's Distinguished Life Sciences Award, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Research Fellowship, and ETH Zurich's Dipl. Ing. Georg Fischer Prize 1998 for most outstanding dissertation, across all departments of the university. She holds three U.S. patents and ten EU patents that have been licensed to three companies. She is the founder of a consulting company and three startup companies. She has published over 100 articles and peer-reviewed conference proceedings, one book, and eight book chapters, and serves on the editorial boards of journals such as Current Opinion in Biomedical Engineering. Knothe Tate is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Biomedical Engineering Society, the American Institute of Medical and Biomedical Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors, and Engineers Australia. Her R&D team has been supported through over $21M in international, national, regional, foundational and industry grants.
