Course Instructor
Brad Sutton, PhD
1215D Beckman Institute
bsutton@illinois.edu
Wiki for course: https://wiki.illinois.edu/wiki/display/BIOE420SP19/BIOE+420+Spring+2019+Home
Information
The Bioengineering student is faced with complex, personalized physiology for each patient and condition that medicine may encounter. However, the capabilities to measure and interact with that biology are reaching new levels through nanomedicine, sensitive detectors, and targeted agents. This course will give students the tools that they need to understand homeostatic systems in the body, characterize them mathematically, and enable simulation and control of the system. In addition, the student will learn to design controllers to impact the system to restore homeostasis when pathology has disrupted it. Students will explore control through theory, written assignments, and MATLAB tools and simulations. Students will complete a project, characterizing a physiological control system.
Objectives
At the end of the course, the student should:
- Translate a problem statement about a physiological system into various forms for understanding its behavior, including: block diagrams, Differential equations, Laplace, Fourier analysis, and state space.
- Understand and be able to apply analytical tools for understanding the behavior of a system, including impulse and frequency response, bode plots, and phase diagrams.
- Be able to assess stability of a linear system. Be able to design a stable controller of a linear system. Be able to use system identification principles to characterize an unknown system.
- Demonstrate understanding of tools to deal with nonlinear systems often encountered in biology.
- Be competent in applying the systems analysis tools in MATLAB to understand complex, high-order systems.
Logistics
Homeworks:
Weekly homework assignments will be given that require the students to demonstrate the concepts learned during the reading and lecture portions of the course. Not all problems will be graded. Solutions will be made available for all problems, and it is the student's responsibility to ensure that all problems were understood. Note: Students may discuss homework problems, but should write up solutions independently.Grading of homework will be done through: gradescope.com - students will receive an invite link when they are added to the class roster.
Final Project
The course will also include a project. Working in teams, the students will design a controller to meet a specified need for controlling a physiological system. Students will analyze the system and simulate its behavior or a subsystem of its behavior. The course project takes the place of a final exam and should demonstrate the application of the concepts learned in the course from the controller being studied to the physiological system being controlled.Quizzes and Exams:
Several short quizzes will be given, unannounced, on several occasions to test understanding of assigned reading and lecture material. The course will consist of three exams. The exams will be distributed throughout the semester.
Grading
Grades will be posted at Compass2g
| Assignment | Percentage of Final Grade |
|---|---|
| Exam 1 | 15% |
| Exam 2 | 15% |
| Exam 3 | 15% |
| Homework | 20% |
| Final Project | 25% |
| Quiz and Class Participation | 10% |
| Grading Scale |
|---|
| A > 90% |
| B > 80% |
| C > 70% |
| D > 60% |
| F < 60% |
Additional Expectations:
- The student will consider the readings as required material and may be tested on items not covered during lecture.
- Not all homework problems will be graded. Students are expected to study the solution sets to ensure that they have understood all of the problems assigned.
- Working on course material with students who are not currently enrolled in the course is prohibited. Also, using course materials from previous semesters is prohibited. This is cheating as defined in the student code and is a violation of academic integrity.
- There will be no excused absences for quizzes, but the lowest two quiz grades will be dropped.
- Homework is due by the start of class on the due date, unless otherwise noted. Homework not turned in on time will be accepted until 1 pm the following day at a 50% penalty.
- Students must strictly adhere to the academic integrity statement below.
Statement on Academic Integrity
The University's policy on academic integrity can be found in the Code of Policies and Regulations Applying to All Students under Article One, Part IV. The following policies support and reinforce that policy.
1. Science cannot exist without honesty. We expect all students, as scientists-in-the-making, to hold the highest standards of scientific and academic conduct. Any form of cheating on any graded work in this course is unacceptable, and will be dealt with as outlined below, and in accordance with the University-wide standards in the Code of Policies and Regulations Applying to All Students.
2. We require that all graded work be entirely your own, and that anything you write using the words of other writers be correctly attributed. Some specific points follow:
On assignments, quizzes, and presentations, the answers that you turn in for grading must be your own understanding of the material. Even working within a group, you must contribute to the group's effort and not just have one person do all of the work. Since we cannot monitor you as you complete your work, we have only the appearance of your work from which to judge. If the work that you submit closely resembles that of another student/team too closely, we may conclude that it was not your original work. Failure to adhere to these standards may result in a grade of zero for the entire assignment, for all persons involved.
On assignments, if you use another source to obtain the facts and/or opinions necessary to complete your assignment, you must credit the source (see next point below) and rephrase the information so that your assignment is entirely your own words. A good practice is to read the source until you have a thorough understanding of the material, and then put it away. Write your assignment as if you are explaining the information you learned from reading the source to a classmate, member of your family, or to your teaching assistant. You may wish to look at the source again for clarification, but be certain that you do not use statements taken directly from the text in your assignment. Your entire assignment should be in your own words. Furthermore, paraphrasing does NOT mean replacing key words in a statement with synonyms. For an example of proper paraphrasing of a statement, consult the University's Code of Policies and Regulations Applying to All Students.
Failure to adhere to these standards may result in zero credit for the entire assignment.
On assignments, if you use the ideas and/or opinions from another author or source, you must provide the appropriate citation. That is, you must, using APA format, place a parenthetical reference to the source that provided you the information necessary to complete that portion of the assignment.
Failure to adhere to these standards may result in zero credit for the entire assignment.
On assignments, if you use a statement taken directly from any book or other publication, including the course textbook, you must provide a citation. That is, you must put the text in quotes and, using APA format, place a parenthetical reference to the source at the end of the quote. Direct quotations should be severely limited in your assignment; they should be used ONLY in the following situations:
- A definition of a term
- A profound statement made by an expert in the field
Furthermore, any direct quotation should then be restated in your own words in order that your instructor may evaluate your understanding of the material.
Failure to adhere to these standards may result in zero credit for the entire assignment.