“If we can build more direct connections between bioengineering and the fields of ecology and basic organismal sciences–converging at a place you might call “econeering”–we could together meet urgent bioengineering needs more quickly, and direct resources toward basic science discovery,” say MIT scientists Edward Boyden and Brian Y. Chow, who are using econeering to pioneer a new area–the use of natural reagents to mediate control of biological processes using light, sometimes called “optogenetics.”

“Scientists could deploy these basic science discoveries more rapidly for human bioengineering benefit.”