Why I left Sheffield

Tomorrow will be my last day of employment for the University of Sheffield, and the first for the University of Bologna.

One of the many blessing of this strange job of mine is that over the years I met a lot of people, and with many of them I developed a fairly close relationship.  Seven years ago, when I announced that after over 20 years I would have left the Rizzoli Institute in Bologna to take a chair of biomechanics at the University of Sheffield, quite a few wrote me asking why.  Most of them were familiar with the pleasant life that Bologna can offer, and the only Sheffield they knew was that of The Full Monty. Eventually the answer to that question became clear: I moved to Sheffield to make true the dream of a lifetime, the creation of a very large research institute entirely dedicated to in silico medicine. 

And Sheffield delivered: the dream came true, and it is called Insigneo.  Also, Sheffield turned out to be much better then I thought.  When I left for good a few weeks ago, I did it with strong emotions, as this city welcomed me with open arms, I found a lot of friends, and I enjoyed there some of the most exciting years of my life.

So tonight as I change my status on LinkedIn, I am sure I will start to get many emails asking why I am leaving Sheffield and Insigneo.  But this time I have my Blog, so here is the explanation, before you ask it.  The answer is made of three parts: Brexit, Cycles, Roots.

Brexit

There is not much to explain here I guess. The reasons that attracted so many of us from other European countries to UK are all at risk of disappearing on April 1st, 2018.  I came to UK because it was one of the most inclusive countries with an amazing level of multiculturality in the universities, second only to the USA.  I came because it was a country with solid economy, with a sensible government, and with a special commitment toward research and the future in general.  And, most important, I came because UK was part of Europe, and everywhere in Europe is home. If not for a miracle, on April 1st UK will wake up wrapped in its "little England" xenophobic nostalgia, little island not part of Europe anymore, ready to face a severe economic crisis doubled by a severe political crisis.  I was not given the opportunity to vote for the referendum, but I can express my total disagreement with this decision of the people of the UK by leaving the country.

Cycles

To be honest during most of my career I experienced a lot of professional frustration; while this for sure added fire that drove me to some extents, it also gave me a gastric ulcera.  The experience as Director of the Insigneo institute was amazing, and for the first time a couple of years ago I stopped by professionally frustrated.  Insigneo was everything I wanted and more, and I was happy, and satisfied. So satisfied that I started to ask myself if this was what I wanted to do until a retired, in ten more years or so.  I looked back, and God knows how many jobs I had: I was an engineer in industry, a programmer, a laboratory rat, an entrepreneur, a consultant, a research manager.  But the happiest of all jobs for me is to be an academic.  You teach, supervise a few master and PhD theses, do research by leading a small group of post-docs. That is what I want to do until a retire.  Building Insigneo was a trip, but my cycle is over, now it is time for someone else who has something to prove.  "Stay foolish, stay hungry" said Steve Jobs; the cycle is over, I am not hungry anymore, time to move on.

Roots

In these seven years I spent a lot of time with other emigrants, many from my own country.  But there is a big difference between them and me: most of them moved to UK in their 20s, early 30s.  My wife and I moved in UK when we were 50.  We had a very good life in Sheffield, but our roots back home are deep, and they have been calling us back with louder voices as we get older.

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But of course nothing of this would have mattered if I did not received this fantastic offer from the University of Bologna.  From tomorrow morning I will be Professore Ordinario (Full professor)  of biomechanics in the department of industrial engineering; I will also go back to lead the Medical Technology Lab at the Rizzoli institute, where most of my research career took place. 

Many old acquaintances I meet in these days ask me: "are you happy?". My answer is always "of course!".  But the truth is that I am happy and I am sad.  This change is what I wanted and needed to some extents, but I will miss Sheffield, Insigneo and all my friends and colleagues.  I might even come to miss fish & chips, in time!

Scienza e politica? Individuale e collettivo

La vittoria dei 5Stelle alle ultime politiche ha riportato al centro del dibattito sui media ed i social networks la questione delle vaccinazioni obbligatorie.  In molta della comunicazione politica recente sembra esserci un scontro tra scienziati e politici, e da qui l'esigenza di enunciare il primato della politica sulla scienza.  In alcuni casi i toni sono così esasperati che sembra quasi che il dibattito tra scienza e politica sia ancora quello al tempo di Galileo, quando la chiesa mal tollerava che qualcuno con un cannocchiale potesse mettere in discussione le parole dell'autorità ecclesiastica.

Ma questo e' solo l'effetto devastante della banalizzazione totale del dibattito, qualunque dibattito, su i social network.  In realtà la stragrande maggioranza degli italiani concorda sul fatto che la scienza il metodo migliore per investigare la realtà materiale che ci circonda e che il metodo scientifico assicura che mentre scienziati individuali possano avere torto, la scienza nel suo complesso produce conclusioni che sono quanto di più vicino alla verità l'umanità sia mai stata in grado di produrre. Ad esempio è una verità scientifica che le vaccinazioni obbligatorie sono necessarie a garantire la salute pubblica.  

Il fatto che sia una verità scientifica non vuol dire che singoli individui non possano decidere diversamente, per una varietà di motivi.  Ad esempio la chiara correlazione scientifica tra fumo e cancro ai polmoni non mi ha impedito di fumare fino a 50 anni.

La decisione su quali regole imporre per via legislativa ai cittadini di uno stato è una decisione politica. Nel decidere un provvedimento legislativo un bravo politico deve tenere conto delle evidenze scientifiche, assieme a tanti altri fattori sociali, culturali, economici, ecc.   Anche se di solito una legge che contraddice patentemente le evidenze scientifiche sul lungo termine raramente risulta essere una buona idea, sono convinto che anche in questo caso la stragrande maggioranza degli italiani concorda sul fatto la scienza è al servizio della politica, e non viceversa.

Ma allora di cosa stiamo discutendo?  Il vero dibattito, che sta alla radice della discussione sulla obbligatorietà delle vaccinazioni, su gli 8 Km del gasdotto TAP, e di tante altre cose è come bilanciare i diritti individuali di ogni cittadino con quelli della collettività.  Questo è un vero dilemma, che non ammette soluzioni esatte che lasciano tutti contenti. 

Il problema è che in Italia, come in tanti altri paesi, abbiamo avuto per lungo tempo una opposizione populista, che per ogni argomento si schierava con quelli che si opponevano ad una decisione del governo. Questi, a prescindere da chi fossero, quanti fossero, e a cosa si opponessero erano il "popolo" che si opponeva all'elite di cui il governo di turno era portavoce.  

La popolarità dei populismi oggi giorno è legata al fatto che dall'opposizione non hai bisogno di fare alcuna sintesi di bisogni conflittuali. Ma questo problema esplode quando i populismi vincono le elezioni e diventano governo. Se rendiamo i vaccini obbligatori le mamme anti-vaccini saranno contrarie; se non li rendiamo obbligatori le mamme con figli immunodepressi saranno contrarie. 

Vedendo quello che sta succedendo in giro per il mondo dove poteri populisti sono al governo, la soluzione è semplice: non si affrontano i problemi per davvero, si rende la politica l'arte dell'impossibile. E quindi si fa un decreto che conferma l'obbligo, ma consente l'autocertificazione, che però non verrà accettata dal molte scuole, ecc. Insomma un casino, in cui tutti potranno pretendere di avere vinto.

La scienza non ha mai smesso fare il suo lavoro, e neanche la politica. Chi si è preso una lunga vacanza, in forma di sonno della ragione, è la cittadinanza, nel senso della responsabilità individuale del bene collettivo.

"El sueño de la razón produce monstruos" riporta questa acquaforte di Francisco Goya.  È ora che risvegliamo il nostro senso di cittadinanza, o presto ci troveremo a confrontarci con i mostri.

English summary: this blog is mostly written in English.  However, today entry is related to a debate taking place on the Italian media and social networks, so I decided to write it in Italian. science has produced solid evidences that mandatory vaccinations are beneficial for public health.  The decision on the vaccination policy is political; but any wise politician should inform their policies on the conclusions of the scientific community.  But in spite the rhetorics of the Italian political debate is not whether vaccinations are good for public health, but rather if we as western societies do still care about public health, or more in general how we resolve the need for "public good" with that of individual freedom.  And this is a political question, not a science one.

The tyger is back

In the early days of my career e-mail was something new, and Internet did not exist.

In 1989 I got my first email account, while at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Upon my return to Italy I was recruited in 1990 by the Rizzoli Orthopaedic Institute, which at that time had no on-line services, as most institutions.  Courtesy of the local supercomputing centre, CINECA, I got my first e-mail account (LK1BOQ71@cineca.it was my "menomic" email address), which I shared with Fabio Baruffaldi.  Connection was through a powerful 28k dial-in modem 😂.

Soon after, Fabio and I bought the first Local Area Network to be installed in the institute for our Medical Technology Lab, and sometime later we registered with at that time the only Internet authority for Italy, GARR, the domain ior.it for the Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli; for many years, if you typed "whois ior.it" from any Unix machine you would see my name as Technical Contact.

Once we were connected to the Internet and we got our own domain, we managed for some years our own e-mail server, which provided me with the viceconti at tecno.ior.it e-mail address.  For the old geeks like me, we were running Eudora Internet Mail Server on a Mac SE/30:

Why I am taking you through this memory lane?  Because when I finally got my first personal email address (not sure of the date but probably around 1996 or 1997)  I had to pick my signature.  In those early days of e-mail communication, it was also good netiquette to add the bottom of the signature a motivational quote, which somehow told the world something about you; this has changed now, and in professional settings it is frowned upon.  but those were easier times, so I picked mine:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

The Tyger, William Blake, in Songs of Experience

I am not into poetry, and I never read William Blake cover to cover, but this poem captured my fantasy as it worded so well the fascination that as a young mechanical engineer attracted me to biomechanics and mechanobiology.  There is indeed something fearful but also seductive in the symmetries and regularities that you notice in the manifestations of living matter, a symmetry that inspired the giants whose shoulders we stand on to investigate living organisms with the same approach and the same epistemology used to investigate the inanimate world: that of physical sciences.

The period between 2001 and 2011 was topical for my career; a lot of my work was around community building and engagement, so I wrote A LOT of emails in those years.  And the tyger signature became my trademark, everyone who dealt with me in those years will remember it, because it was an unusual quote.  

In October 2011 I left Bologna, to start the Insigneo adventure in Sheffield.  As I switched email address, I decided to drop that signature, another way to mark a discontinuity with the past, I guess.

Today, as I prepare to move back to Bologna in October, I got activated my new unibo.it email address, and I had to configure it.  And for some reasons, I felt it was appropriate to put back my older tyger quote.  I am not sure why, I guess it is another way to go back to the roots.

So from October, if you will get an email from me you will be reminded of the fearful symmetry.  But did not I said that today this is frowned upon in professional settings?  Well, I guess this is one of the few perks of getting older, you do not care so much about what the others think. 😁

The emerging regulatory framework for in silico medicine

Finally, the video recording of my two-hours letter on The emerging regulatory framework for in silico medicine is available on youTube.  Enjoy, and contact me if you find any inaccuracy. https://youtu.be/hjOAUjulznw via @YouTube

In silico medicine drives medical research back into Pasteur’s quadrant

Traditionally, we separate science basic research, which quests for fundamental understanding of nature without any consideration of the possible use of such knowledge, and applied research, which aims to solve specific problems without any ambition of adding anything to the fundamental understanding.  If we draw a 2x2 table, the top left quadrant with no consideration of use and quest for fundamental understanding is sometime called the Bohr’s quadrant, while the bottom right quadrant no quest for fundamental understanding and consideration of use is called the Edison’s quadrant.  But there is a third type of research, sometime referred as the Pasteur’s quadrant, that while motivated by clear considerations of use, produces nevertheless fundamental understanding. Donald Stokes, in his book “Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation”, advocates that this third type of research, although least common, is potentially the most rewarding for society.

I agree with Stokes, but I have an additional reason to believe that that falling in Pasteur’s quadrant is the best science. Too frequently “curiosity-driven” research turns out to be “opportunity-driven” research, where we carefully select research questions that can be rigorously answered with the methods and approaches available; in my opinion, this can be epistemologically dangerous, for example when it produces causal reductionism.

The radical specialisation of biomedical research in the last 30 years has produced a dramatic polarisation of large volumes of basic biological research, which turns out to be very difficult to translate into any application related to human health, and an applied medical research still too frequently built on shaky methodological and theoretical foundations.

So, pushing biomedical research back into the Pasteur’s quadrant would be a desirable thing. I believe the trajectory of in silico medicine is producing this positive effect. When in silico medicine started, its key feature soon became, especially within the European Virtual Physiological Human (VPH) initiative, the ambition of predicting how specific physiology determinants would change due to the progression of disease or interventions in each individual patient. To do so effectively, it was essential to rely as much as possible on mechanistic knowledge, that does not rely on population average generalisations.  This forcefully narrowed the scope of VPH models to those parts of human physiology for which reliable mechanistic knowledge is available, such as biomechanics, mechanobiology, electrophysiology, bioenergetics, etc.

But now I believe we are starting to observe a reverse effect, where in silico medicine is not only research on the application of the available knowledge but also drives the production of new fundamental mechanistic knowledge on physiology, pathology, and the mechanism of action of interventions, knowledge that subject-specific models need to be more useful supporting relevant clinical decisions. This is producing a completely different type of in silico medicine research, that while motivated by well-defined clinical problems, pursue the discovery of new fundamental knowledge.  Interestingly, this does not limit anymore in silico medicine to the use of computational methods, but rather promotes the type of circular synergy between modelling and experimentation that others advocated.

We as a community need to reflect on this new trend, and explore how the available funding instruments need to be adjusted to support this potentially rewarding development.