INTELLECTUAL MERIT: This proposal seeks support for travel awards for graduate students, post-docs, and faculty from underrepresented groups to attend the Frontiers in BioMagnetic Particles III Symposium inTelluride, CO, June 2-4, 2013. This will be a three-day symposium focused on the characterization and control of magnetic carriers. The symposium will cover topics on magnetic particles for: (a) biomedical imaging and sensing, (b) magnetic separations, (c) drug delivery, hyperthermia, and biomedical applications. There will also be a separate student session on career development with panelist from academia, industry, and government. A well-structured agenda is presented in the proposal, and appropriate lead speakers have been lined up for each session. This is a crosscutting topic that benefits from input across the scientific, engineering, and medical fields, and the symposium is well designed to facilitate meaningful discussion among representatives of all of these communities.
BROADER IMPACTS: Scientific and technical broader impacts in the fields of drug delivery, nanoparticle mediated therapies, and medical imaging are expected. Financial support is requested to provide four travel awards at $1000 each to support graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and young faculty. Awardees will be selected on the basis outstanding scientific contributions, as judged by submitted presentation abstracts, and the perceived level of need. At least two awards will be reserved for women and unrepresented minorities. Funding priority will be given to graduate students attending their first national meeting, junior faculty giving an oral presentation, and researchers belonging to underrepresented groups. The existence of potential funding for travel support will be described in advertisements for the symposium. Requests for travel awards will be accepted at the time of abstract submission and selections made by the organizing committee.
The purpose of this project was to support travel for graduate students, post-docs, and faculty, from underrepresented groups to attend the Frontiers in BioMagnetic Particles III, Telluride, CO, June 2-5, 2013. This three-day symposium focused on the characterization and control of magnetic carriers. Magnetic carriers are unique nano-materials with a wide range of biomedical, environmental, and technological impacts. This international event brought scientists, engineers, medical professionals, and program managers together to discuss this rapidly growing and highly interdisciplinary field. Magnetic particles are an enabling technology for a wide variety of biomedical, chemical, electronic, and functional materials research because they provide a unique handle to manipulate and sense nanostructures. Because this field benefits especially well from cross-fertilization of ideas from chemistry, biology, physics, and engineering, is our goal to create a technical and social environment in which participants from diverse disciplines can discuss trends in research and form collaborations The three-day symposium took place June 2-5 at the Ah Haa Center for the Arts in Telluride, Co. The event was co-organized by Drs. Jeffrey Anker and Thompson Mefford. Both are young faculty members at Clemson and are very eager to build lasting, sustainable partnerships with national and international collaborators. A technical committee of faculty members from the departments of Chemistry, Bioengineering, Chemical Engineering, and Materials Science and Engineering was organized to read the abstracts of all submissions to and determine which speakers would most suit the needs of the symposium. Magnetic nanoparticles are unique materials that can be actively controlled using external fields. Four specific topic areas were highlighted. (a) Biosensors and imaging. (b) Magnetic separations. (c) Biomedical applications of magnetic nanoparticles. (d) This symposium provided collaborative efforts among these areas. As the lines between the scientific disciplines began to blur in recent years, it has become vital to showcase the advances of eminent cross-disciplinary investigators while training young scientists of the next generation in such an environment. This symposium succeed in this manner by brining those early in their career into this interdisciplinary field. Financial support ($4,000) was provided to a total of 4 travel awards at $4000 each primarily to support graduate student researchers. Awardees were selected based on outstanding scientific contributions based on their abstract submission and level of need. Funding priority was given to graduate students attending their first national meeting, junior faculty giving an oral presentation, and researchers belonging to underrepresented groups. Of the he four participants, three whom are women, two of which were Hispanic.
