Dr. Francis J. Doyle III

Provost and
Professor of Neuroscience & Engineering

Office of the Provost,

Brown University

Host:  Dr. Gintaras Reklaitis

 

Website

Dr. Francis J. Doyle is a professor of Engineering and Neuroscience and the 14th provost of Brown University. As the University's chief academic officer and chief budget officer, Dr. Doyle works closely with the president to advance the University’s mission of teaching, research and service.

Prior to his role at Brown, Dr. Doyle served as the John A. Paulson Dean of the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at Harvard University, where he was also the John A. & Elizabeth S. Armstrong Professor. As Dean, he established SEAS as the “connective tissue” of Harvard University, developing numerous joint programs with other Harvard schools, including new joint master’s degrees, new executive education programs and a new Ph.D. degree. Prior to his time at Harvard, Dr. Doyle was the Mellichamp Professor at UC Santa Barbara, where he was the Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering, the Director of the UCSB/MIT/Caltech Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, and the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering. Prior to that he was on the faculty of the University of Delaware. He started his academic career on the faculty at Purdue University in 1992.

His research interests are in systems biology, network science, modeling and analysis of circadian rhythms, and drug delivery for diabetes. For his role in the development of the artificial pancreas, he received the AACC Control Engineering Practice Award (2015), the IFAC Industrial Achievement Award (2020), and the IEEE Control Systems Technology Award (2023). Dr. Doyle is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (2016), the National Academy of Inventors (2020), the National Academy of Engineering (2021), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2024). In his spare time, he enjoys hiking with his family, racing sailboats, and is a certified soccer referee at the adult and collegiate level.

 

The future of healthcare will involve personalized medical therapies for individuals. In applications involving the delivery of a drug (for example, insulin), such personalization can be achieved through the use of tailored feedback control strategies. For over 30 years, our research group has collaborated with medical experts on the design of algorithms for safe and effective insulin delivery for individuals with Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). T1DM is a chronic autoimmune disease affecting approximately 35 million individuals world-wide, with associated annual healthcare costs in the US estimated to be approximately $15 billion. Over the years, there have been remarkable innovations in glucose measurement technology, insulin pump design, and personalized control algorithms. Over the last 5 years, multiple commercial closed-loop devices have entered the market, thus delivering the so-called “artificial pancreas” to individuals with T1DM. In this talk, I will outline the difficulties inherent in controlling physiological variables, the challenges with regulatory approval of such devices, and will describe several control systems engineering algorithms we have tested in clinical and outpatient settings for the artificial pancreas.