A University of Wisconsin engineer who creates innovative health promotion technologies was named to the National Academy of Engineering Tuesday.
The NAE elected David Gustafson, UW’s Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies director and professor emeritus of industrial and systems engineering and preventive medicine, and 68 others to its 2013 class of new members. The NAE additionally appointed 11 foreign associates Tuesday, according to a statement from the academy.
The statement said NAE elected Gustafson for industrial and systems engineering methods to advance the medical care of aging, lung cancer, severe asthma and drug addiction patients.
Gustafson said it was “fantastic” to learn about his election Tuesday. He joked that the news was better than eating sliced bread.
College of Engineering Associate Dean for Research Gerald Kulcinski said there are at least a dozen current NAE members from the college. He added he is proud to see another engineer from the college become a member of such a prestigious organization.
“It’s always an honor to have one of our colleagues nominated and then elected,” Kulcinski said. “It is very difficult to get a nomination, and once you get a nomination, it’s very difficult to make the final cut. For any one of our faculty who achieve that, it’s an honor for not only the college but the university to have someone in the national academy.”
After joining UW faculty in 1967, Gustafson said he began theorizing on how to engineering technologies to address contemporary health issues in the late 1970s.
In 2004, he started the Center for Health Enhancement System Studies after his wife battled breast cancer to create computer systems that aid people in dealing with illnesses they are facing.
“The reason I got into all this kind of stuff is I always tried to say, ‘How can I become a better person by doing the research that I’m doing?'” Gustafson said. “I’ve always tried to attach my research to the various stages of my life.”
Gustafson said he always linked his research to his personal experiences. He engineered products that helped his teenage children cope with struggles of stress, sex or alcohol; developed screaming canes to prevent elderly from walking on their own as he aged; and built tools to monitor health conditions in case of an emergency, such as when he went into cardiac arrest requiring a transplant five years ago.
CHESS is based in the college, but the center encompasses faculty from 13 different disciplines, as well as state funding and 35 addiction treatment facilities around the country.
Kulcinski said CHESS has been instrumental in boosting the profile of the college.
“The honor of being in this national academy is probably the highest you can achieve as an engineer,” Kulcinski said. “The work that he has done has been recognized nationally and internationally. The department has gotten a fairly high ranking nationally because of the work he’s been doing.”
Gustafson said the real benefit of health technologies, especially mobile devices, is accessibility anytime, anywhere. He said the rising role of digital technology in health care could reduce the need for human work in the industry and worsen unemployment issues as these devices eventually revolutionize the world.
Gustafson was quick to divert credit for his election to NAE to his colleagues, which CHESS Principal Investigator Dhavan Shah attributed to his modest personality.
“He is a warm, humble, considerate guy,” Shah said. “He’s remarkable in terms of his ability to integrate various ideas into doing very high research.”
