UCSD’s “Bert” Fung Accorded Honor at Tenth Annual Asian Heritage Awards Professor Yuan-Cheng “Bert” Fung’s contributions and influences reach far beyond a singular achievement. He was among the first to use the foundation of traditional engineering to establish the emerging field of bioengineering. In 1966, he was recruited to the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), to found its Bioengineering program. His vision of bioengineering was not simply an “application” of engineering to biology. Rather, he recognized from the outset that separating the engineering and life sciences was artificial and an impediment to long-lasting progress. Developing principles that combined biology and engineering, he created not one discipline, but two, within the emerging field of bioengineering: first, biomechanics in the 1960s and, subsequently, tissue engineering in the 1980s. On Sept. 14, 2013 Professor Fung reaches another milestone – his 94th birthday. As a special honor, the Asian Heritage Society will celebrate this occasion with a special commendation from the City of San Diego as part of the Tenth Annual Asian Heritage Awards at the San Diego Marriott Marquis and Marina, 333 W. Harbor Drive, San Diego. The highlight of the event will be the Special Recognition Award accorded Dr. Pradeep Khosla, the first Asian chancellor of UCSD. Dr. Khosla himself will accord the honor to Professor Fung at the conclusion of his acceptance speech. Professor Fung is recognized universally as the father of biomechanics - the introduction and integration of mechanics to understanding structure and function of biological tissue. This was a new field when it was introduced by him. Then, two decades later, emphasis on the integration of mechanics and biology led him to define the field of tissue engineering - in which the principles and methods of engineering and life sciences are merged, with the aims of understanding the structure-function relationships in normal and pathological tissues and of developing biological substitutes to restore, maintain, or improve tissue functions. By applying his profound knowledge and elegant analytical methods of mechanics to the study of biological tissues, Professor Fung literally created the new field of biomechanics – and, importantly, his insistence on rigor and excellence set the standard for others to follow. Biomechanics has since become a major interdisciplinary field in which engineering principles and techniques are combined with biological observations and behaviors to solve important biomedical problems. By using this general overarching theme, Professor Fung has established the foundation of biomechanics in a variety of living tissues, including the lung, the heart, blood vessels, blood cells, ureter, intestine, muscle and skin. His insight and rigorous approach to characterizing tissue from a mechanics perspective brought a quantitative approach to what had previously been a more or less descriptive science. Professor Fung has received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Science, the highest honor in science in the United States, from President Clinton in 2000. To reserve a seat or table, sponsor any part of the event or for additional information, go to asianheritageawards
Posted on: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 23:10:10 +0000
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