The award funds will support a Workshop on Transport Processes in Biomedical Systems to be held in Bethesda, Maryland on May 6 and 7. Approximately 50 participants will travel to attend the workshop from throughout the United States. Grant funds will be used primarily to reimburse travel expenses for these participants. Dr. Kenneth Diller of the Biomedical Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Austin will serve as co-organizer of the workshop with Prof. Geert Schmid-Schonbein of the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California at San Diego. This award is to cover the expenses associated with the reimbursements and with local processing procedures.
The goal of the workshop will be to bring together scientists, engineers, and government funding agencies to discuss basic research needs and opportunities in the increasingly important technology area of biotransport. Interactions involving fluid mechanics, thermal transport and mass transport phenomena in biology and medicine and their impact on cells and tissues are pervasive in understanding the causes of disease and development of new prophylactic, diagnostic, and therapeutic protocols for improving human health. The workshop will include presentations by a number of leading researchers in these technical areas and will help researchers and funding agencies to define improved focus areas for future directions of research and education that will better link transport processes research with medical needs and advances.
The broader impact of this Workshop is that there will be a wide spectrum of participants from throughout the biotransport and medical communities of the USA who will participate in developing and learning about the roadmap for future work in biotransport research and applications. There will be numerous female participants in the meeting. The Workshop will be co-sponsored by the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health, establishing a new collaboration between the two agencies in this important area addressing fundamental bioengineering and health issues.
