Roderic Pettigrew, founding director of NIBIB, reflects on a career as a “physicianeer”—merging medicine, engineering

Roderic Pettigrew: Rob, I have to tell you, I’ve reflected on this a bit and I have said it before, and I’ll say it now, and I’ll probably say the same thing in the future because it really is the truth. I think I came out of the womb as a scientist.

RP: I mean, as far back as I can remember, I’ve just always been thrilled, and excited, and motivated, and inspired by discovery—and just understanding the why and how things work, and fundamentally, the way that they work.

And the more that I learned, the more fascinated I became by the element of unity and consistency throughout nature, and how interrelated everything is, and how much it all, once you understand it, makes sense, how it cuts across disciplines, this thing called life that we have.

It’s a seamless blending of all of the sciences and engineering.. In fact, if you didn’t have biochemistry, biology, genetics, physics, engineering, there wouldn’t be life. I mean, life is that. It’s a manifestation of all of that. And there’s just no boundaries in human biology, physiology, or health, and disease. There’s just no separation of all of these disciplines.

So, I think from an early age, I was really just fascinated by understanding, and whenever a new subject was coming up, I was just excited because I thought, “Man, I’m going to learn more about how things work and about how life works.”

I remember being fascinated at an early age when I discovered that many of the things that you bought in a store, you could actually make yourself. I go, “Whoa!,” because you think that these things, these mystery items that you have, like a vacuum cleaner for example—is just fascinating. The fact that you could have this thing, that you roll it across the rug, and it actively swoops up dirt and so forth, without really understanding the principles behind it. And then once you do, you go, “Oh, that’s not so mysterious. I really know how it works.”

And that sort of understanding emerged both from the classroom, but also from experience in doing and making things. A simple thing like a kite, which I first bought as a kid, and my neighbor across the street who was in the military said, “Well, I see you flying kites. I actually make kites and we can make these large kites, and you might want to have some fun.”

I said, “YOU can make kites?”

He goes, “Oh yeah, just get too thin rods or weeds, and tie them together, and we’ll cover them with this paper that we have on this large roll. And you put a tail on the end to sort of anchor it ,and the wind will catch it, and it goes up.”

And I go, “Well, it has to be small and light enough to fly.”

He goes, “Well, airplanes are big, and they fly.” And I thought, “Whoa, there is something to that.” We actually started out making kites that were, as a kid, that were bigger than me, physically. We’d fly them. He had this big five foot wide roll of industrial wrapping paper. He had a big roll in his garage. We’d roll it out and cut a big strip of it. It was so dense and heavy, I was surprised it would work for a kite—that it would fly.

RP: He was my across-the-street neighbor. He was actually in the military. And Rob, I’ve got to tell you, this was not a high-end neighborhood. The house that I grew up in—no joke. I was one of three kids. I was in the middle. My father drove me to this neighborhood one Saturday—this is in Albany, Georgia.

He said, They’re going to be building five houses on the street. And they had cleared out this patch of land, and we’re going to move into one of these houses, or, I’m thinking about us moving to one of these houses.”

At the time, we were living in a rented apartment. We drove over. He showed us this track of land that had been cleared. They had started to kind of mark off where these five houses would be. And no joke, Rob. We came back the next weekend and all five houses were built and up in one week. This is no exaggeration.

You’re talking about a prefab on a slab. Now, at the time, it didn’t phase me. I was like five or six years old. I just figured that’s the way it was. But in retrospect, it was amazing, man. I grew up in this house that was literally built in one week.

I laugh about it because I said we had original central heating. It had no air conditioning, and the central heating was this one gas stove in the middle, in the wall. That was the middle wall of the house that divided the sleeping half of the house, and the living half of the house. The whole thing probably was no more than I would guess, 1,200, 1,500 square feet, something like that.

We had this one vented gas heater in the middle because we would all get up in the morning and go stand by the heater to get warm. And then my mother would cook breakfast and we’d stand in front of the oven to get warm. I mean, she’d put some bread in the oven and toast it, and we’d open the door. That was sort of my early childhood, but it was certainly marked by scientific investigation and discovery.

RP: Oh, I got a great start. So, in that sense, it was a blessing. It was a very, very modest neighborhood as I just described. But I was fortunate that I had parents, both of whom had gone to college, and that’s where they met.

RP: This was in the sixties. They met as students at Fort Valley State University in Georgia during World War II. And my father came from a financially very poor family, but the family was rich in terms of brother and sisterly love and support. And one of the things that they really did value was learning, and knowledge, and education. And I got that from them.

My father was the youngest of seven. While he went to college and finished, he was one of only two of them who did. But all of them were very supportive. And anytime I finished anything of any value, I always got a great round of applause from across the family.

If I got an A, my father would send a note to his brothers and sisters. “He got an A!,” and they would all write back, “Whoa, you got an A!”

And I had one uncle who would send me a $2 bill. My father’s older brother, I don’t think they make those anymore, but seriously, he’d send me a $2 bill. Alright, keep those coming. Then it got to the point where I was consistently making As, and he would say As and Bs, and I would say “Bs! I don’t make any Bs.”

Then in the sixth grade, Rob, I was fortunate to have a marvelous science teacher, Mrs. Burke, and I told you that I was fascinated by kites and wondered how planes as big as they are, could get in the air and fly and so forth.

And so one day in my sixth grade science class, Mrs. Burke walked in and she said, boys and girls, today we’re going to learn about the Bernoulli Principle. This was a pivotal point for me.

It was around the time of the space race and the Apollo program. And so she came and she said, we’re going to learn about the Bernoulli Principle. And we all listened. And it was the first time I ever heard the word “Bernoulli,” and she said, “the Bernoulli Principle is something that you all are familiar with, although you never heard about it before.”

She said, the Bernoulli Principle explains how birds fly, how planes fly, how anything that flies, flies. And she goes, “When you see a bird fly, that’s the Bernoulli Principle in action. When you see one of those big multi-ton steel planes up in the air, that’s the Bernoulli Principle in action.”

You don’t make advances without technological innovation. And this is a technological innovation institute.

— Roderic Pettigrew

And so with that, she had my 100% attention all along. So then she said, “OK, the Bernoulli Principle governs fluid, and fluid flow, and air is a fluid, water is a fluid. Blood is a fluid. Air is a fluid. And when fluid moves, it exerts less pressure than when it doesn’t move. And the faster it moves, the less pressure it exerts.”

Then she went to the front of the classroom, and on a chalkboard drew the shape of the wing of a bird and the wing of an airplane, and it had this airfoil shape, curved on the top, flat on the bottom.

She said, “OK, here’s the shape of the wing of a bird. And here’s also the shape of the wing of an airplane. On the top, there is this curve, on the bottom it’s flat. As the wing of the bird or the plane moves through the air, air goes over it, and under it, because of the curvature on the top, the distance is greater. So, the air just speeds up, and it travels faster on the top than it does under the bottom.

“Because of the Bernoulli Principle, the faster moving air on the top has less pressure than the air on the bottom. There is a difference in pressure, high pressure on the bottom, low pressure on the top. What happens? It lifts. It lifts up to the top. That’s where the lift comes from. That’s how birds fly. That’s how planes fly. Bernoulli Principle.”

Rob, I was like, “Wow! Now I know why birds fly. I know how they fly. I know how planes fly, and I understand this.”

We lived about three miles from the school, and typically I would walk, but that day my mother picked me up from school, and we had an old Pontiac.

They don’t make Pontiacs anymore. We had an old Pontiac two-door car with front and back seats, but it was a sedan with two doors. So she picked me up and I got in the backseat, and it had those crank windows where you have to crank the windows up.

And so I got in the back and I had some of my papers with me, but before I could crank up the window all the way, she takes off. And when she takes off, one of the pages that I had flies out of the window as she’s driving. And then I said to my mother,as it hit me, “I know why that happened.” Bernoulli Principle. The air on the outside is moving fast. There’s less pressure on the outside relative to the inside. I go, “Whoa! That’s why the paper went out the window.” I was like, “Oh man, Bernoulli Principle.”

So when my mother pulls out and the paper flies out, and I said, “Mama, I know how the paper flew out of the window.” It was a great sense of satisfaction but also inspiring to learn more.

She said, “It flew out because you didn’t roll up the window quick enough.” I said, “No, I know why. I know exactly why it flew out. I know why it flew out.” So, I go “it’s the Bernoulli Principle,” and I started explaining to her. So then we got home, and I used to have this race with my mother.

I would try to get all my homework done before she could cook dinner. And if I could get it done before cooking dinner, I could eat dinner, then I could go out and play. That was sort of like an internal race. I’m in my room doing my homework, and then she says, “I need you to vacuum the rug.” Well, we didn’t have carpet, we did have a rug. “I need you to vacuum the rug before dinner.”

I go in and I’m vacuuming the rug, and it’s sucking up pebbles. And I went, “Whoa, Bernoulli Principle. That’s how this thing works.” And so it just hit me, Rob. I go, “OK, there’s a motor inside of this. It’s whirling around. It’s spinning the air. The air is moving fast. It has less pressure on the inside of the cleaner than the outside. That’s where the suction comes from.”

And then it hit me. I was like a sixth grade kid, and I was going like, “This is amazing, man.”

RP: It was understanding all of these things around us that we interact with in life and how they work, and this fundamental principle at play, and applying a principle to situations, and problems and problem-solving. That concept, which is the core of scientific innovation, got me at a young age—and I’ve just been on this journey ever since.

RP: Well, because it continued in high school, it was just an opportunity to learn more and more and more. And then by the time you got to college, which was at Morehouse, you start interacting with the real world, and real world problems.

And you could see that you have an opportunity to have an impact on other people’s lives. And in fact, we were challenged to do that at Morehouse. It was held out as an expectation.

One of the great things about Morehouse was that this environment, and culture of expectation of accomplishment, expectation of contribution to humankind, it wasn’t that you can do great things—it was, “We expect you to do great things.”

That came from Benjamin Mays, who I just brushed up against. He had just retired, but he would still come on campus from time to time. And that attitude, that culture was strong and pervasive. There is this statement, where they say that Morehouse holds a crown above the head of its students and challenges you to grow to be substantial enough to wear it.

RP: It evolved. Initially, I went there as a scientist. I was a physics major at Morehouse. The chair of the Physics Department at Morehouse was a graduate of MIT. Morehouse was a small college, and they had 2,000 students when I was there in the 1970s. The Physics Department was small. There were only four or five of us in the whole department as majors.

There were three teachers. The chair was a graduate of MIT, James Mayo, and the other key person who was there, Sam Neff, was a graduate of Harvard. So, he was a physicist who came from Harvard, who was interested in Morehouse. I never really asked him why. He is still alive, Rob, and we’ve stayed in touch over the years.

He was such a devoted professor. He wasn’t just someone who taught classes. He actually had a relationship with the students in the class. Several of us would literally go to his house after class hours, sit in his kitchen at the kitchen table, and work through physics problems. And his wife would bake cookies and bring them out. We worked on physics problems on the kitchen table.

He was a Phi Beta Kappa Harvard grad. And that’s where I got my physics training from. These guys, but particularly him, Sam Neff, was very engaged with me and was influential. So, I told him that I had this interest in applying nuclear physics because over the four years that I was there with progressive courses, when we started getting into quantum mechanics and nuclear—I thought, oh, this stuff is really neat. We should be able to apply this to healthcare.

In fact, that was starting to evolve. This concept of nuclear medicine was starting to evolve. And he was just very encouraging. He said, we could apply this to all sorts of things. A member of our church who had been in the military was a dentist, and he was talking about advances in dentistry.

And I mentioned this to Sam Neff, and he said, “Yep, you could do that. But he said, if you are going to do it, think about the whole body. There’s just problems from head to toe. It’s not just the mouth, everything.” And I go, “Oh yeah, there’s such a need.”

So as I finished Morehouse, my interest and goal was in using physics, particularly nuclear physics, to address healthcare problems.

And that eventually led me from undergraduate school, to graduate school, to medical school, to the first position I had post-completing my medical training.

I’m skipping ahead now because I’m looking at the clock.

RP: When I was at Morehouse, by the way, I went to Morehouse early. I have to tell you this. I did not finish high school. I got a scholarship when I was in 11th grade from Charles Merrill, who was the head of the investment firm, Merrill Lynch. I was a Merrill scholar, and Charles Merrill was at that time, chair of the board of trustees of Morehouse.

And each year he would pay for six Morehouse students to study abroad. You had to apply for and compete for the scholarship. So I did. And I was fortunate to have been selected as one of those. I got a Merrill scholarship to go abroad but I also had gotten a Merrill scholarship to come to Morehouse early, which is the other thing he did too.

Each year, he would pay for two high school students to come to Morehouse early if they met certain academic markers and levels. I left Monroe High School in Albany, Georgia after the 11th grade, went to Morehouse as a Merrill scholar, as an Early Admissions Merrill Scholar. While there, I then applied for and was awarded a Merrill Overseas Study Travel Scholarship. So, Charles Merrill, the great investor and philanthropist, paid for my whole education.

Which, afterwards, I wrote him the most sincere note of thanks, and then updated him along the way. When I was at NIH and I had started and founded the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, I wrote him a letter saying, “I want you to know that your investment in me has been beneficial, and here’s what I’m doing now.”

And to my surprise, Rob, at the age of 90, he wrote me back – a handwritten letter. I got it about a week later. It was hilarious, because he started out by saying, “I’m so very sorry it’s taken me so long to respond to you.” This is, like, a week later. He said, “but I’ve just been so busy with business deals.” He was in his nineties!

RP: I was the founding director.

RP: No.

RP: So, I’ll explain that, but I want to tell you that there is a common thread in my whole professional life, and I’ve laid the groundwork for it already. And that is this concept of converging the physical sciences, which is where I started out as a physicist with the Bernoulli Principle, the physical sciences, the life sciences, and engineering.

And the engineering comes in because I wanted to take those scientific principles and understanding, and medicine, and converge them all into something that was socially meaningful, and valuable, and impactful.

And that is the other key theme in my young life from my family, immediate, my extended family—I mentioned all of my father’s brothers and sisters, and also my mother, who had a brother and a sister. In fact, the two families were very much blended, but I very much came from a home where concern for your fellow man was continuously emphasized.

So, it was that combination of coming out of the womb as a scientist and having a family where they always talked about advancing the wellbeing of others, and contributing to the wellbeing of others. And both of those things came together in this convergence of physics, engineering, and medicine.

RP: Bull. BS. Bologna. It has everything to do. It has everything to do with it! I mean, at the end of the day, what are we trying to do, Rob?

RP: Well, what is this all about? What we’re all trying to do is to live healthy and long lives. That’s what we’re trying to do, man. Health as we think of it in terms of how our bodies work, but it also means happiness and social belonging and fulfillment, all of that.

And you want to have that as long as you can. And so in order to do that, you have to understand these things that get in the way of that. Disease is one of them.

My contribution, your contribution is to counter that, to counter the disease that gets in the way of this goal that we all have, which is healthy longevity. It is just those two words, Rob. We’re all pursuing healthy longevity.

No matter whether we are geneticists, basic biologists, biochemists, nanoscientists, imagers, artificial intelligence designers. If you’re working in the health arena and the science and health arena, whether it’s VCU, or NIH, or where I am now in the School of Engineering Medicine at Texas A&M University, all of us are trying to achieve this goal of global, planetary, healthy longevity.

RP: Let me try to make this cohesive. So, I talked about coming out of the womb as a scientist. I talked about being in a family where concern for your fellow man was always there. This was nurtured in high school. I got to Morehouse, and we were instilled with this belief that we not only can, but are expected to make a difference in this world.

And my focus then was on bringing the physical and life sciences together to help achieve human well-being. So, I go to MIT by way of RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), specifically to work on engineering and nuclear physics applications to healthcare problems.

My PhD thesis and work was at MIT, after earning a master’s in nuclear science and engineering at RPI—because the year I graduated, RIP started a program in nuclear in medical physics, and this is the reason I went there.

And when I was there, I learned about this exciting cancer therapy work that was being done at MIT. I transferred to MIT, and that’s where I got my PhD working on a treatment for glioblastoma multiforme. That’s what my PhD thesis was on. It used a control nuclear reaction in the brain.

The technique is known as boron neutron capture therapy, in which you selectively load a boron-10 compound into brain tumors. Brain tumors don’t have a blood brain barrier, so they selectively uptake an injected substance. In this case, boron-10. The boron-10 atom, when exposed to slow neutrons, absorbs in its nucleus, a neutron. It becomes boron-11.

The boron-11 isotope, unlike the boron-10 isotope which is stable, is highly unstable, and radioactive. It fissions. And when it fissions, it breaks apart into two fission fragments that have a lot of energy. It is the same amount of energy per atom as in an atomic bomb, because an atomic bomb also releases energy by nuclear fission.

Our whole goal is to train medical problem-solvers and innovators. This is a new converged engineering-medicine healthcare professional, so we use a new name. We call them ‘physicianeers.’ That’s who we’re training. We’re training medical innovators.

This is the nuclear fission process. These two fragments are also charged, and because they are heavy, an alpha particle, which is the nucleus of helium, and a lithium ion, they don’t travel far in tissue because they’re large and charged. The range in tissue is small. How small? 10 microns.. That’s about the diameter of a cell.

That means that you’ve got this nuclear explosion limited to this tiny cell-sized diameter! Therefore, it is a particularly localized explosion. And that was the core appeal for bora neutron capture therapy. When I first read about this, I was like, “Wow, man, this is another Bernoulli moment.”

It’s like, “Whoa, this could really make a difference.” So, I went to MIT specifically to work on that project and my PhD thesis was on it. That was in the 1970s. My thesis advisor, Gordon Brownell, was the founder of the physics research lab at Mass General Hospital. I was in Mass General Hospital quite often/steadily. That gave me exposure to the medical environment.

I actually worked on another problem as well that had to do with osteoporosis detection, also using neutron activation analysis. And through that—it was so satisfying, Rob—I said, “I love this stuff. I could be even more effective if I knew medicine firsthand.”

So, while I was finishing my PhD thesis, I learned about an accelerated MD program for those who already had a PhD. It was an experimental program at the University of Miami. If you already had a PhD, they would accelerate you through medical school in 24 months, six days a week, nonstop, no days off.

I finished my PhD, defended my thesis, and then two weeks after that, I drove down to Miami—I drove from Boston to Miami—started medical school. I entered this accelerated program. It was a small group of existing PhDs, about 30 students. All of the students already had PhDs but in a range of scientific fields, from biochemistry, to biology, to pharmacy to nutrition. We had one mathematician and a couple of us physicists.

And so I finished that, which is another story. Because it was one of those things where you go, “I’m glad I did it, but I wouldn’t do it again.” I had only one day for a break every two weeks. Every two weeks I took off two hours on Sunday to go grocery shopping. That was it. For two years. That was my whole social thing. Two hours of grocery shopping every two weeks.

I finished that. I went there expecting that I would go into radiation therapy. But when I saw the day-to-day life of a radiation therapist, it didn’t really quite match with what my thinking was. Because of the academic breath, I started out in internal medicine. I went to Emory as an intern. I was an internal medicine intern, straight internal medicine intern at Emory.

Emory has great basic internal medicine training, just working in Grady Hospital. But after about my 30th GI bleeder, and my 50th chest pain patient, and so forth, I go, “OK, I kind of understand how to do this now. I want to get back to using some of my physics to help creatively problem-solve.”

So, I applied for a residency and fellowship at UC San Diego in nuclear medicine, and I did transfer to UC San Diego. Then at about that time I started to begin hearing these discussions about this new diagnostic technology called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging, now known as MRI. In the beginning, it was NMR, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance—which is the more accurate term. At that time, nothing was broadly known about it. But with the background that I had in physics, I was able to teach myself, and I sort of became self-educated as a resident while at UC San Diego.

So, I was self-taught on MR, actually to the point where I started giving talks on MRI. It was just emerging. And once I finished my training at UCSD, I worked for one year in industry for the first manufacturer of MRI equipment, which has since been bought out by Phillips Medical Systems. This initial company was called Picker International at the time.

They were first in MR, and were based in the UK. Picker had an office in the U.S. I worked as a clinical research scientist there, and I co-developed the first cardiac imaging software for Picker. I personally installed that software on the first 10 MR scanners made, sold and installed by Picker worldwide.

I physically went to each site, installed the software, which was the cardiac specific software that I had written. I calibrated it, and then taught the radiologists and cardiologists how to use it.

RP: At about that time, I got a Harold Amos (current name) career development award from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. I was actually the first cohort of those fellows. And I used that to go to Emory, as an assistant professor. There, I continued my work on cardiac imaging, to develop four dimensional and quantitative flow imaging in the heart and vascular system. It was the early days of MRI so I became known for that. And, as a result, was recruited by NIH to start the new institute you referenced, NIBIB, that had been mandated by Congress.

This institute really fit my training so well because it is an institute created to accelerate the convergence of the quantitative and life sciences and engineering to advance biomedical technologies and improve healthcare. That was in 2002—and I led the building of that, up virtually from scratch, though there was a small nidus of startup staff. It had not been an office the way some institutes start out. And in fact, the truth, Rob, is that it was openly opposed by the NIH leadership at that time.

Indeed, several at the NIH told me that when I got there. The acting director then, and for a couple years, was Ruth L. Kirschstein, who followed Harold Varmus—the esteemed Nobel Laureate—when he moved to head Memorial Sloan Kettering. Ruth had been his deputy and was wonderful; beloved. She was quite open and direct. Told me the whole story of outright opposition, but also strongly welcomed and supported me after the legislation that created NIBIB was passed and signed into law by President Clinton.

But the reason for that, Rob, is that the NIH is appropriated a budget by Congress, and that budget has to support all of the institutes and centers at the NIH. Each institute has a line item and gets its own budget, but it’s all rolled up into a composite overall NIH budget set by Congress.

I think that the other institutes and the NIH leadership at that time didn’t want another effective mouth at the table.

RP: It was a proverbial zero sum game, and so that was understandable. And there were these arguments about, well, we have engineering already in some of the institutes. We have imaging already in some institutes. But the external community, both the imaging community and the bioengineering community, had lobbied Congress strongly because there was not an institute that focused on the science and development of these technologies and innovations as a field to advance the research that actually catalyzes advances in the basic sciences.

And in fact, the truth of the matter, Rob, is there’s a lot of back and forth and give and take among tech invention and basic knowledge discovery. You invent something new and that allows you to make a discovery, and once you make a discovery, you get a better understanding. Then, you say, “I understand part of it, but there’s still part of it I don’t understand. I need something that shows and reveals the science, the laws of nature to me with greater clarity.”

And so you go back and you refine your tools and your technology, and there’s all this back and forth and dynamic intertwining of tech innovation and fundamental discovery. The so-called Pasteur’s quadrant, which uses inspired basic research, is where we operated. It was the home of cutting -edge developments/ technology innovations that lead to impactful knowledge breakthroughs. I dubbed it “ the institute of cool stuff ” in our early years.

And this institute, NIBIB, indeed captured that domain and is now, I would say, the signature institute for technological advances that catalyze our understanding, and consequently the progress that we make in problem-solving and healthcare delivery.

You don’t make advances without technological innovation. And this is a technological innovation institute. I spent 15 years there doing that. It was critical. For example, during COVID, there was first the basic science that had been developed for 15, 16, 17 years prior to the realization of the mRNA based vaccine.

And while Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman had demonstrated that in principle you could instruct a cell to make a protein of interest, like the spike protein, you needed the technology to deliver the mRNA into the cell to provide those instructions.

And that required engineering an ionizable lipid nanoparticle that would function much like a Trojan horse that would take this instruction biologic into the cell, release it, and have it do its thing.

And without that, we wouldn’t have a functional vaccine. You’d still have a laboratory principle that you demonstrate in principle, showing “with a specific mRNA, if you get it into a cell, it could tell a cell what to make, and you can make the protein of your choice.”

But how to convert that into something that practically works, that you can inject into a person, required engineering at the nanoscale.

And that was part of our domain, as was the case with home-based diagnostics. Interestingly, while I was at the NIH, we started this national network for developing point-of-care technologies, called the Point-of-Care Technologies Research Network (POCTRN), which was actually leveraged by my successor, quite successfully, to spur some of the industry of home-based covid diagnostics.

I recall we had proposed the precursor, along with the Gates Foundation. There’s a scientist at Gates Foundation, his name is Dan Wattendorf. He and I had a couple of meetings when I was at the NIH, where we expressly laid out a goal, the development of what we both called an effective “home pregnancy test for the flu.”

Before COVID, the only real home-based diagnostic we had was for pregnancy. And you didn’t have any diagnostic that would tell you if you had a viral infection. You had something that you could look at and tell whether or not you were pregnant. We thought, wouldn’t it be great if you had something like that to tell you whether or not you have a garden variety annual flu. In fact, a family member just asked me recently, why isn’t that current home test technology used for the flu?

Because we all get these sniffles and colds, but you don’t know whether you have the flu, or COVID, or something else. And I reply, “Absolutely. In principle, this could be done.”

We had hypothesized and held this home flu diagnostic out as a goal in 2015 or so, somewhere in that timeframe. It was a joint effort by NIBIB, my institute, and the Gates Foundation. What we did not have was the concentrated funds that came as a result of a congressional action when COVID hit. This became such a national priority that there was this large amount of federal funding made available for tests development.

The NIH was asked to support and help develop diagnostics for COVID. And with that focus, with the resources to do that, my old institute I am proud to say, leveraged this network that we had created called POCTRN. That network was engaged. There were several academic institutions that had already been working on developing point of care and home-based diagnostics. And that gave a “jumpstart” to “Go after a COVID diagnostic.”

This of course leverages all of the basic science that was there—Pasteur’s Quadrant. Across the globe, we knew the antigen itself. We knew the sequence for the antigen. We knew how to make the antigen. So, it was a matter of putting all of these pieces together to develop what is functionally the equivalent of a home pregnancy test for COVID.

RP: The final thing I will say, so I had this “labor of love” for 15 years at NIBIB, and then I got a call from Texas A&M that said, “We have been thinking about creating a new concept medical school that will converge engineering and medicine, and we would like to talk to you about it.”

And I said, “Well, OK. I’ll talk to you. I’ll help you then. Gladly”

So I came to Houston to talk and they said, “Well, what we really want is for you to do it, for you to lead it.” And I said, “Well, we can talk—though I’m more likely to assist” But they convinced me when advised, “we have bought this new building, spent over $100,000,000 dollars to acquire this new big building, 17-stories, right in the Texas Medical Center—it’ll be in partnership with Houston Methodist Hospital, and you are the person in the country who we think could make this, ENMED happen.

And I said, “Well, it is a continuation of the path I’ve been on all along.” So, that’s how I ended up in Houston. Just this past May, we graduated our first class, Robert—and I will end on this shortly. This is what I’m doing now. I started a medical school that converges engineering and medicine in the same curriculum.

The students graduate in four (4) years like they do in every other medical school, but with two degrees—an MD degree, and a Master’s in engineering innovation, unlike any other 4 year medical school. And each student is required to invent a solution to a healthcare problem. Our whole goal is to train medical problem-solvers and innovators.

This is a new converged engineering-medicine healthcare professional, so we use a new name. We call them “physicianeers.” That’s who we’re training. We’re training medical innovators. We are creating physicianeers. That’s the purpose. That is what’s distinctive about us.

The name of the program in our school of Engineering Medicine is called ENMED, Engineering Medicine. It’s a collaboration between A&M and Houston Methodist Hospital. Houston Methodist is perennially on the US News and World Report Hospitals Honor roll as one of the top 20 hospitals in the country. That is what I’m doing now. We graduated our first class this past May.

The graduation was applauded enthusiastically across the nation to the point that we were able to have a celebratory colloquium that featured five Nobel Laureates—Peter Agre, Carloyn Bertozzi, Martin Chalfie, Phil Sharp, Carl Wieman, the co-inventor of the internet, Vint Cerf in a colloquy moderated by the president emerita of MIT, Susan Hockfield. That was our coming out party. At Commencement, our speaker was famed geneticist/ past NIH Director/ White House Chief Science Advisor Francis Collins.

RP: How about that, man?

RP: Yeah, that’s right.

RP: Every day I go into school and I see these kids, I light up immediately, actually inspired by them and the future they hold within them. I tell them, like I told the inaugural graduates, “Each of you in your own way can be a difference-maker. Whether it is in a private practice or the CEO of a startup, be a difference-maker. Your calling is to make a difference in the lives of all of us around you, and those to follow you. Be a difference-maker.” That’s my mantra.