and Abstract Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the leading cause of death for infants born with birth defects and represents 1% of births in the US. Successful treatment of CHD offers opportunities to improve quality of life for these individuals with consequent benefit to society. Over 1 million adults in the US are living with CHD. While there has been much progress with applying engineering fundamentals to understand and CHD over the past decades, there remains more to accomplish. To help focus engineers and physicians, the 6th International Conference on Clinical and Engineering Frontiers in Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease, the meeting this project proposes, will bring together leading professionals in both engineering and medical disciplines to foster collaboration between the 2 communities in the study of treatment of CHD. Concurrently, the conference will serve as a platform to encourage the next generation of engineers and scientists to continue pursuing treatments for CHD. By bringing together these 2 groups, there is an opportunity to advance current treatment, identify under- researched defects and bring engineering to bear as an aid to physicians in understanding hemodynamic and mechanical aspects of the disease, improving and developing diagnostic tools and technology, and improving treatment planning. Therefore, a conference focused on CHD can achieve improved treatment and understanding of this age-related disease that afflicts a significant segment of the US population and the consequent reduction of medical costs associated with CHD accompanied by an improved patient quality of life. The conference will offer support to members of underrepresented groups involved in biomedical engineering research in pediatric and congenital heart disease, thus upholding the national goal of engaging underrepresented groups into the STEM disciplines. This conference also provides successful role models for women, 2 who are on the international organizing and steering committee, who have established vibrant research programs and labs in this field. This is the 6th iteration of this conference and we seek to maintain the continuity of the International Conference on Clinical and Engineering Frontiers in Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease series that effectively brings together leading researchers in engineering and medicine who are engaged in cutting edge research in CHD. This is an excellent forum to exchange ideas and build of collaborations between leading researchers from around the world. Moreover, the conference promotes new researchers becoming engaged in the field through the Young Investigator podium speaker program and its young investigator poster competition. Our conference objective is to request support for the 6th in this series of international conferences on the engineering research in pediatric and congenital heart disease which has historically attracted both USA and international participants, affording an international forum for exchange of ideas and research.
Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the leading cause of death for infants born with birth defects and represents 1% of births in the US. To help focus engineers and physicians, the 6th International Conference on Clinical and Engineering Frontiers in Pediatric and Congenital Heart Disease, the meeting this project proposes, will bring together leading professionals in both engineering and medical disciplines to foster collaboration between the 2 communities in the study of treatment of CHD. The conference will offer support to members of underrepresented groups involved in biomedical engineering research in pediatric and congenital heart disease, thus upholding the national goal of engaging underrepresented groups into the STEM disciplines.
