The field of bioengineering and nanotechnology has rapidly emerged as an important area of research that affects ranging from the environment to medicine; however, there few forums that bring together biologists, chemists, and engineers to discuss ways in which their disciplines can collaborate to find novel solutions to fundamental and applied problems that are limiting the development of new technologies and therapies. In response to this need, we are organizing the Sixth International Conference on Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (ICBN). This meeting will be held every two years and covers the breadth of bioengineering and nanotechnology to promote, shape, and refine new directions in the field. The title for the conference is "Bionanoscience and Bioengineering for Translational Medicine."
Intellectual Merit The International Conference on Bio-Nanotechnology (ICBN), organized by AIChE's Society for Biological Engineering, has become a premier venue for presenting, discussing and stimulating new research in the applications of nano-scale molecular engineering to biology, biotechnology and biomedicine. Over the last decade the conference has moved on a rotating basis among sites in the U.S., Europe and Asia, encompassing a broad, international set of participants. This year's ICBN is scheduled for June 24-27, 2012 in Berkeley, California, situated in a locale where bio-nanotechnology activity is very intense, guaranteeing a high-level of participation. The strategy of the organizers is to plan a program combining a few leading, high-profile keynote speakers, with a set of invited and contributed talks that will present work from laboratories of emerging leaders. Five topical areas will be the basis of the conference organization: Biological Devices/Biosensors and Molecular Diagnostics; Cell and Tissue Engineering; Drug, Protein and Gene Delivery Systems; Nanoparticles, Nanocomposites and Nanoporous Materials for Bio-Applications; Synthetic Biology. The organizing theme of this conference is "Bionanoscience and Bioengineering for Translational Medicine", focusing on bringing the unique combination of Bio-Nanotechnology presented at ICBN to bear on delivering cost-effective health care. Achieving this goal requires the intellectual intermingling of biology, medicine and molecular engineering that ICBN has a demonstrable track record of creating.
Broader Impacts There are several aspects to the broader impacts of this year's ICBN. First, there is the impact of the unique combination of fields that come together at ICBN. Beyond this, the organizing committee is specifically targeting a broad set of emerging leaders in relevant fields with a group of speakers that gives some prominence to emerging leaders who may not yet have received significant invitations previously. The organizers have also given serious consideration to attracting an appropriately gender-balanced set of speakers. NSF support will be used in part to help achieve these broader impact objectives.
The scope, theme, and aims of the meeting fall squarely within the mission of the NSF, which has been increasingly committed to integrating the physical and engineering sciences with the life sciences, encouraging research and development in multidisciplinary areas, educating the next generation of young researchers, and helping increase the diversity of the workforce in science and engineering. This application, if successful, will provide partial support for graduate student/postdoctoral associate participants, and by providing a forum for the interactions between normally separated leading scientists and engineers to stimulate new ideas that could benefit economic, health and environmental related activities.
