Cancer for Engineers and Physicists

Class Format

The class is designed to teach cancer to a physical sciences and engineering audience that is not trained in biology. The primary content is cancer biology, but the assumption is that the audience is not schooled in biology and not interested in biology for its own sake — rather, the assumption is that the audience wants to learn biology exclusively in a cancer context. This leads to a just-in-time approach in which the structure of the class comes from translational aspects of cancer, how cancer affects patients, what are clinical interventions, and how do we as engineers and physical scientists use our toolset to affect these problems.

The content will alternate between descriptive (the properties of cancer are XX, cancer cells do YY, the cell cycle is controlled by protein ZZ) and quantitative/analytical (Gompertzian growth describes tumor growth as an exponential growth with exponentially decaying rate, likelihood of clonal expansions is described as f(r) where r is the somatic fitness ratio).  The majority of the work will be descriptive biology NOT quantitative; however, many engineering-y approaches (eg network diagrams will be used)

Language is a central component of the class. One must speak the language of biology and medicine to be able to interact with biologists and clinicians. Thus students will be expected to learn medical and biological vocabulary and the workload of the class includes a significant portion for vocabulary and language skills.

Homework will be assigned weekly.  These homeworks will involve a mix of (a) descriptive questions, much as one would find in a molecular biology text (e.g., Lodish) or class (b) generation of network diagrams and maps (c) quantitative analysis of biological systems of cancer relevance, as one might find in a biomedical engineering text (e.g., Salzman) (d) study of current clinical practice.

A number of exams/quizzes will be assigned on blackboard.  These will primarily be designed to provide an organized structure for asynchronous learning of low-level material.

A prelim and a final will be set.  Both exams will be oral exams, nominally 10 minutes long.