The BMES Annual Fall Meeting is a high quality, multidisciplinary scientific event conducted by the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). This year?s Meeting is co-hosted by the University of Connecticut and Brown University and will be held in Hartford, Connecticut, from October 12-15, 2011, and will feature a one-day workshop, at least four plenary lectures, numerous research presentations, a variety of special sessions, and several valuable networking opportunities for members of the BME community. There will be a total of 14 parallel technical program sessions providing over 800 oral presentations and an additional 1,600+ in poster presentations. Special sessions will include several distinguished BME lecturers and a ?Meet the Candidates? poster session that will promote BME employment opportunities. The pre-conference workshop, ?BME-IDEA? will deal with important contemporary issues in Biomedical Engineering on technology transfer and commercialization. Other special sessions, including ?Career Alumni Panel?, Resume Review/Writing Workshop?, and ?BMES Town Hall Meeting?, will give participants an opportunity to understand the career of a biomedical engineer, how to apply for job opportunities, and learn about the current state of the society and discipline. A record 3,500+ attendees are anticipated for the 2011 meeting. The potential record attendance is based upon the very high number of abstracts received for the 2010 meeting (i.e., 2,182, which is a 23% increase over the number of submissions in 2009) coupled with the fact that conference-friendly Hartford is very conveniently-located in the Northeast between New York City and Boston. A booklet will provide program details to the participants of the conference. All technical presentations will come from one-page, peer-reviewed abstracts, which will be compiled in CD format and distributed to all registrants. Copies of the CD will also be provided to all co-sponsoring societies. Currently, the CD is envisioned to serve as the only technical proceedings of the meeting due to the large number of high-quality abstracts accepted. At this conference, at least four extremely high-quality plenary speakers are scheduled during a time with no other activities so that all conference participants may attend these talks as well as the workshops. The 2011 meeting currently has sponsorship commitments from six major sponsors, including the University of Connecticut, Brown University, Covidien, and Medtronic.
The 2011 annual meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) in Hartford, Connecticut, was co-hosted by Brown University and the University of Connecticut, with Dr. Thomas Webster (from Brown University) serving as the meeting chair and Dr. Donald Peterson (from the University of Connecticut) serving as the meeting vice-chair. The theme of the meeting was "Fostering Collaborative Academic, Clinical, and Industrial Research in Biomedical Engineering" and was the facilitator of important cross-fertilizations between the life sciences and engineering technologies and the facilitator of this integration in the multi-disciplinary approach of BME practice. The 2011 meeting had a direct impact on mainstream Biomedical Engineering (BME) within the national and international communities with more than 3,000 in attendance with participation from undergraduate and graduate students, university faculty, biomedical engineers, engineers from other disciplines, cell and molecular biologists, biochemists, biophysicists, and other scientists, including clinical researchers, physicians, and members of the industrial communities. There were 2,061 abstracts accepted with 704 oral presentations and 1,357 poster presentations made by these participants and, for the first time at a BMES meeting, several sessions were approved for American Medical Association (AMA) Physician’s Recognition Award (PRA) Category I credit and several individual presentations approved for Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) credits. The 2011 annual meeting featured workshops, plenary lectures, research presentations, a variety of special sessions, and valuable networking opportunities for the BME community. Participants benefited from the scope of these presentations and workshops that provided a broad impact for the current state, and future, of the discipline. The meeting hosted 14 distinctive scientific tracks, including a newly expanded track in Translational Biomedical Engineering, which is a critical aspect of BME research and practice where strategies to implement and/or speed translation have become essential. Sessions in this track included: • The Translational Triad: Clinical, Industrial, and Academic Collaboration, • Models and Practices of Commercialization and Entrepreneurship, • Translational Biomedical Engineering: Research to Practice (R2P), • Clinical and Translational Research and Science in Biomedical Engineering, and • Education and Promotion of Translational Biomedical Engineering. The 2011 meeting attracted political attention with Mr. Dannel P. Malloy, Governor of Connecticut, providing the opening address to the Society on the importance of BME in the United States economy and on human health and wellbeing (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8801cDUlEc). A diverse number of exhibitors from the clinical, industrial, and academic sectors participated in this meeting, including Covidien, Medtronic, National Instruments, Valtronic, and Hartford Hospital, as well as over 50 universities (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPiGuC-6MW8). In addition, real-time information about the meeting was available to all meeting participants, as well as to the international public internet community at large, via Facebook (www.facebook.com/BMESociety), Twitter (@BMESociety), YouTube (www.youtube.com/BMESociety), and the BMES Blog (www.bmesblog.org). Funding support from NSF made several initiatives in this meeting possible, including support for: • student participation, including travel cost assistance and awards to underrepresented minority undergraduate and graduate students, post-baccalaureates, post-doctorates, junior faculty, and mentors/faculty scientists in the biomedical and behavioral sciences, • distinguished speaker participation by assisting in the reimbursement of expenses, such as travel costs, and • the cost of publishing the peer-reviewed Program, which represented the publication and dissemination of the conference proceedings.
