Kathrine

Thank you for joining me today. To start, would you mind introducing yourself, your field, and the main questions that your research group studies?

Professor Lu

Okay, yeah. My name is Lucas Lu. I'm a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Delaware.

I'm also the director for the Center for Mechanical Research, and my major research interest is osteoarthritis and biomechanics. So for my group, I mainly focus on how we can develop new treatments for osteoarthritis and joint pain.

Kathrine

That's very cool. So how would you explain biomechanics to a high school student who's heard the term before?

Professor Lu

Biomechanics is just to use mechanical engineering or mechanics to understand how living things move and function. So actually, for our body, a lot of function and tissue are related to mechanical loading and relies on mechanical loading. For a simple example, if you want to grow taller, workout will be helpful, right?

But the question is, for the workout, if you have to pick a running marathon and play soccer, which one do you think will be better for your height?

Kathrine

I'd say maybe playing soccer. I think running the marathon might be too hard for a young body.

Professor Lu

Yeah, that's part of the reason. And another major reason is soccer is irregular impact loading, and running is a regular, repetitive loading, right? And the irregular impact loading is much better for the growth of your growth plate.

So you can get taller by that. This is a well-known factor in sports medicine. And also, another example is when you drop an ice cube on ice, the ice cube will run for a long distance before it stops, right?

Because of very low friction. But in our body, such as the joint, the knee joint, our hand joint, our temporal medulla joint, their friction is even smaller than that. That's why it can last for like 100 years without any problem.

So from these two examples, you can see why mechanical engineering is important to understand our body and to treat the disease.

Kathrine

Yeah, absolutely. So thinking back, what first made you interested in this field?

Professor Lu

Yeah, my training in college was mechanical engineering. And then I was doing undergraduate research in a biomechanics lab. And then at that time, I was fascinated to see how mechanical engineering can solve a lot of health problems.

So actually, that's where I studied to do the biomedical engineering work.

Kathrine

So can you walk us through your path from university to becoming a professor and leading your own research group?

Professor Lu

Okay, so yeah, as I said, my previous college training was in mechanical engineering. And then many, most or a majority of undergraduate students will do research in that lab. And I was doing research in a biomechanics lab.

And from there, I started to understand why mechanical engineering is important for our musculoskeletal system and our health. So I studied the research. And then for graduate school, I studied biomedical engineering, mainly focused on cartilage in Columbia University.

And then I did a postdoc training in another lab, in a different lab, which is mainly focused on how mechanical loading impacts the behavior of the cells. Okay, so after the postdoc training, I came to Delaware about 16 years ago, and I became a faculty here and slowly built my own lab and doing more research, especially on the treatment of osteoarthritis.

Kathrine

Did you always know that you wanted to go into academia? Or is that something that you decided as you were doing research?

Professor Lu

Actually, no. Even at the end of my PhD study, I was still hesitating whether I should go to industry or stay in academia.

Kathrine

Next, your research focuses on cartilage joints and osteoarthritis. So why is cartilage so difficult for the body to repair? And why is osteoarthritis so important to study?

Professor Lu

I will answer the second question first, why OA, osteoarthritis, is important. This is, osteoarthritis is the leading cause of disability among US adults. So that's why we want to study it.

And the second reason is, at a current stage, there's no effective treatment to stop the OA progression or even reverse it. So basically, the final, the common treatment is to control the pain, ease the inflammation. That's it.

And then until the joint is totally gone, the patient cannot move, the doctors will replace the joint. So that's why we want to study the osteoarthritis. And why cartilage is difficult to repair?

Actually, you may be surprised, cartilage is the simplest tissue in our body. It doesn't have a neural system, it doesn't have blood supply. So it's a very simple tissue.

But even this simple tissue is difficult to repair. One simple factor is, it doesn't have blood supply. That means it's very difficult to get nutrition, right?

And so hold the cells in the cartilage to get nutrition. It highly depends on our daily movement or daily activity. When we are loading it, such as when you stand up, you squeeze out the fluid inside of the cartilage.

So you squeeze out the waste. And then when you release the loading, the water comes back in, brings in new nutrition. That's why, you know, we are saying a proper movement or activity every day is good for the joint health.

That's part of the reason. Okay, so basically cartilage, when it's degenerated, right now, most scientists and doctors believe it's irreversible. When it's degenerating, there's no way to come back.

That's why it's difficult to, you know, difficult to repair.

Kathrine

So what specific research project is your group working on right now, and what are you guys trying to discover?

Professor Lu

We, just one project, as an example, is we are trying to screening thousands of FDA-approved drugs. And see, those drugs are all kinds of different drugs to treat all different diseases. But we are screening them to see which drug is beneficial to osteoarthritis or joint health.

And then we will see whether we can repurpose these drugs for the treatment of osteoarthritis. So the benefit for repurposing is, it's already FDA approved, that means we already know a lot about the drug's safety and its features, and what it does to our body. So in this case, it will be much, it could be much faster than develop a brand new drug.

Kathrine

Yeah. Yeah.

Professor Lu

In this area, if when we want to develop a new small molecule compound, usually it will cost two decades and billions of dollars. So repurpose an existing drug, could it be more efficient to do it? So that's an example of a project.

Kathrine

Could you walk us through one completed experiment or discovery from your research?

Professor Lu

Let me think about it. Okay. So one experiment is in, I think in 2021, about five years ago, the chemistry Nobel Prize goes to clinical chemistry.

So this is a new technique or new reaction between different molecules. So one experiment we developed is, we use this technique so that we can evaluate or measure how fast the cartilage cells build up new protein or new cartilage, and then how fast they degenerate or degrade older proteins. So with this method, we will know which drug can help us generate a new cartilage faster and slow down the degradation of the older cartilage.

Kathrine

Okay.

Professor Lu

So that's one experiment we are doing right now.

Kathrine

So next, what does a typical day look like for you? And how's your time divided between teachings, meetings, writing, and lab work?

Professor Lu

Okay. No, there are no two days identical. So it's always like a mix.

But I have to say, most of my time, especially during summer, are focused on research. By talking about research, I have to write papers, write proposals, and then talk with the students about their current research and how to move forward. So that's pretty much what I'm doing for research.

And during the semester, I also have to teach. And so that will take me like about 25% to 50% time during the semester for teaching. And another big portion of my effort is a service, such as, well, I mean, talking about a service is such as I have to serve on the graduate curriculum committee in the department.

You have to serve as the director of the CBER, you know, all those services. So that's what we usually do every day.

Kathrine

So you mentioned earlier that you didn't decide until basically the end of graduate school to go into academia versus industry. So ultimately, how did you make that decision?

Professor Lu

Well, this is a bigger question. Actually, I talked to many different people, my friends, my mentor, and my family. And eventually, what made me to make this decision is I asked myself what I really want to do.

You know, sometimes it's not that clear. Sometimes we want to, we think we need, we have to survive, we need money. Sometimes we think we, I like science, I like teaching, or, you know, I like interaction with the people, right?

So all those are different things. And which one is the top priority? And which one should be the most important?

When we decide our career path, different people have totally different answers. So eventually, what I asked myself is what I really like. My answer was, I like teaching.

I like working together with students. And I also like to solve new problems with new knowledge. So I picked this direction.

Kathrine

Yeah. So next, what misconceptions do people frequently have about mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, or biomechanics?

Professor Lu

Okay. So for this area, actually, it's a typical interdisciplinary area. So it requires a collaboration with all kinds of different scientists.

For me, such as yesterday, I was working on a project. So in this project, I needed to, I have to collaborate with a professor in chemistry. So they can synthesize new molecule drugs for us.

I have to work with a professor in biological sciences. He will use AI and a simulation to design the molecule structure. And then the chemistry, the professor in chemistry will synthesize the molecule.

And then I also have to collaborate with another professor in biology. He will test the actual activities of the new molecules. And then after their screening, they will send a few compounds to us.

I will test this on human cartilage. So yeah, as you can see, it's definitely a collaboration. And most of my projects are like this.

Of course, we also need a surgeon on the team so that he can tell us what they really need, what matters to us. So it's always a collaboration. That being said, a misconception or sometimes a misunderstanding is when you have a PhD degree or you are a professor, people may think you know a lot, right?

But actually that's not the case. We only know a tiny bit of the area. So if you ask me, okay, do you know, understand osteoarthritis or cartilage?

Yes, compared with like maybe with a high school student, I know a little bit more. But in terms of osteoarthritis and cartilage, I only know a very narrow and focused area. Okay.

So it's not like I'm an expert and I can tell you, oh, your joint has a problem, how you can treat it. No, that's not the case. Even same thing for doctors.

They only know some specific perspective of the disease.

Kathrine

So next, as the director of a research center at a university, how is your work different from just being an individual professor leading one lab?

Professor Lu

As a professor, I have to teach, I have to mentor my own graduate students and do the service. As a center director, one example I give you is recently we just received a grant from National Science Foundation as the center. So the grant will sponsor us to recruit undergraduate students across the country to the University of Delaware.

And then we will assign each student to a lab in the center so that they can do full-time summer research at UD. Of course, the grant will support their housing at Delaware and also provide a stipend to cover the living expense at Delaware. So yeah, that's kind of what we do, I do as a director.

And also another example is we have a minor degree in the department called biomechanics. So we have to help the undergraduate students for the curriculum selection and to guide them how to complete the requirements for this minor degree.

Kathrine

And what is one realistic step that a high school student could take this month to explore biomechanics, biomedical engineering, or mechanical engineering?

Professor Lu

Well, there are actually mechanics is everywhere in our daily life. One simple example is I don't know whether you have paid attention to the material and the pattern of the bottom of your shoes. When you go hiking, you wear hiking shoes.

When you go trail running, you have trail running shoes. And if you go to school, you have different shoes. And if you pay attention to the materials and structure and pattern of the shoes bottom, you will see they are totally different.

They have many different mechanical purposes. One purpose, of course, is friction. For some of them, they want to provide you the largest friction so it can hold you there, right, in the position.

For some of them, they want to be light enough so that you can run longer and faster. And for some of them, it's really kind of thick and heavy. So it's really strong so that it can protect your ankle.

So if you pay attention to the pattern, you will see why it's designed like this. So that's just a simple example. Another example is you can think about why our bone is hollow.

Why the bone is designed like this? Why not? There is a cavity in the center, right?

So the purpose, one of the purposes is the bone has to be strong enough. But at the same time, we want it to be as light as possible so we can go faster, right? So that's why it's hollow.

So when you learn, if you take such a material mechanics class in your sophomore year, you will understand why hollow is the most efficient way to design the bone.

Kathrine

That's really cool. So that's all my questions. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experiences and your knowledge.

And I really enjoyed listening to what you had to say and I appreciate you for coming here.

Professor Lu

Sure, yeah.