By Marianne Thellersen, Director for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Senior Vice President, DTU. Published in Science Report.
For many years, we’ve talked about the digitalization of the life science sector and the obvious benefits of, for example, automating processes and using AI to analyse the huge amounts of data harvested from DNA sequencing. But digitalization can do much more than that, and if we manage to integrate digitalization into the life sciences more radically, it can take us to completely new levels of research and innovation.
Let me give an example from my world:
At DTU, researchers have developed a programmable lab-on-a-chip. The lab-on-a-chip is now a well-known concept that has been around for many years, but what’s new is that it has become digital. This means that we can now move liquids on the chip by sending a current through small electrodes instead of moving them through small channels on the chip with compressed air.
By connecting the chip to a small computer, we can program how the droplets are moved around simply by controlling which electrodes should be turned on or off. It’s also possible to make the drops merge and mix, separate them again, and mix them with a new liquid. Programming lets us create digital protocols that automate longer processes on the chip.
The electrodes also add other exciting features to the chip: you can heat an area of the chip to predetermined temperatures. You can add electrodes with magnetic properties, and with the help of a special coating of microparticles that can capture specific molecules, it’s possible to move these molecules from one liquid to another.
Convergence of technologies
Why is all this interesting? Because now, with a biochip the size of an iPhone, you can multiply DNA molecules - a process also known as PCR - without taking up an entire lab and going through the slow process of pipetting liquids and heating and cooling them in repeated cycles. PCR became a common term during the pandemic, but it’s also one of genetic engineering’s most important tools for making many copies of a certain strand of DNA, for example in order to genetically modify microorganisms.
This interesting development of the biochip is an example of the convergence of technologies. The chip was created after researchers in computer science and biotechnology started moving into each other’s fields and collaborating closely. However, it has taken more than collaboration; the researchers have also had to study each other’s areas in order to understand each other’s backgrounds and the potential of combining them.
In the life sciences, we’re currently seeing this convergence of very different academic areas - biology (e.g. research into stem cells, antibodies, proteins, enzymes, cell factories, genetic modification) merging with digitalization technologies (e.g. big data, automation, artificial intelligence, IoT).
In future, the major technological breakthroughs will come from these kinds of meetings between disparate academic disciplines. They won’t happen if the technological development continues to happen in isolated silos.
This development places new demands on researchers and employees, because it’s necessary both to have a deep insight into one’s own field and a broader understanding of other areas unrelated to your own field. In other words, the employees, researchers, and inventors of the future must understand each other’s ‘languages’.
A foot in two different disciplines
This is a challenge that DTU is taking on through several initiatives.
These include a 13-week course for bachelor students in interdisciplinary bioengineering. Regardless of whether the students study electrical engineering, construction technology, or environmental technology, it is in principle possible for everyone to link up with the biological and biotechnological field.
We’re also looking at all our study programmes with new eyes. Our graduates should be two-stringed instead of one-stringed. We’re working to design the programmes so that in future all our graduates will have a foot in two different disciplines. We’ve developed the learning objectives for the two-stringed graduates; now we need to integrate them into the different study tracks. This places demands both on the students and the lecturers.
It’s a process that takes time. And costs money. But it’s an investment in the future. A future in which the winners will be the nations capable of fully exploiting the potential that digitalization offers and that have knowledge workers who can keep up with the increasing intertwining of technologies. A future in which Denmark will maintain its strong position in the life sciences, whether it’s measured on research, development, or shares in the global markets.
