Trust Fund, engineers seek proper biological control system

The Professor Ayo Francis Ogunye Trust Fund and Department of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering University of Lagos have called the public on the importance of controlling the biological system.

They made the call during a public lecture titled ‘Biological Control systems: Systems Biology of Diseases and the Design of Effectiveness Treatment.’ This event was is to draw awareness to the relationship between engineering and medicine as a profession.

Vice Chancellor, University of Lagos, Prof. Rahmon Bello, said that the lecture is linked beyond theory; practice and control engineering that promote new disciplines and its necessity to its real life application.

Bello added: “We do control process in our own field and that is the practices, but now to apply it in the human system have a lot of advantages and a long way to go. We are looking forward to its spreading.

“We have started bio medical engineering programme and it is a joint programme between faculty of engineering and college of medicine. This kind of lecture has a place in that kind of program and we look in the future that our own aspect here will also contribute internationally to the world, making life worth living and improvement in our medical practices.”

Guest lecturer, Prof. Babatunde Ogunnaike, said that many diseases are caused by failure of biological control system. For example diabetes occur when you are not able to control your blood glucose very well or cancer when the cell population is not controlled very well and many diseases happen as a result of failure of the biological control system.

Ogunnaike added that the appropriate treatment is for you to understand the control system component that might have failed. “There are four different components in a control system and the appropriate treatment is of the knowledge of which one has failed.”

He continued: “In the control system, anything can cause the failure, it could be genetics, it can also be natural practise or you are eating too much or you are not exercising.”

To get the system back to normal, the professor said: “The system can repair itself; systems do repair themselves, if you cut yourself instead of bleeding to death haemostasis which also include blood clothing do occur and sometimes you need to take medications or you need to have surgeries to correct the biological system.

“In the case of blood glucose, if you start exercising. The exercise affects the blood glucose, so you are activating other aspects that can help your control system or you have high blood pressure and they give you medication, it will help to bring down the blood pressure by activating other aspects that would affect the ailment.

“There is recognition that human system is a complex system that requires a lot of engineering to understand it better. It opens their eyes to the fact that there is a whole field out there that requires new approaches that engineers have a lot to contribute to the advancement of modern medicine and it is taking place in different part of the world right now.”

Chairman of the occasion, Mr. Vincent Maduka, in his own account said that the lecture is very moving and home coming that the topic itself is very relevant and it took advances in area of medicine and it brings the relationship between well known rational science engineering with applied life science.

Maduka added that research is very essential. “It can take you from where you are to where you want to be. The lecture, to the students should open their eyes because there are no boundaries to knowledge. You can transfer knowledge from one area to another area and it is a boundary that is being crossed freely.”