NSF has made an award in support of participant travel costs and management costs associated with the "Bioengineering Road Map Summit" being held in the Mountain View, CA, at the NASA Ames Research Center, January 8-10, 2018. The proposal builds upon a previous 2015 and 2016 NSF BME funded workshops in which a Roadmap was created and refined identifying pathways, milestones, and challenges toward ending the organ shortage. This workshop seeks to finalize and publish a public version of the Road Map that draws on expertise from government, industry, and academia to identify the challenge topics, sub-challenges, and technology opportunities that should be addressed to accelerate advancement towards the end goal of engineered solutions to organ disease and impairment.
The workshop will be organized around the structure of the 14 Road Map Committees and will include three main types of activities: 1) keynote panels and presentations; 2) road map working groups; and 3) integrated networking. It is anticipated that 200 to 300 researchers will participate in the Summit. Outputs expected include: 1) An updated Road Map Report for public distribution, including a searchable online version; 2) an increased number of collaborations between participating researchers; and 3) identification of innovative research opportunities and funding sources by introducing non-traditional researchers to the field. Keynote speakers and participants will be curated through: the Vascular Tissue Challenge and New Organ Liver Prize team rosters; existing New Organ Alliance Road Map Committee members; participants in past workshops sponsored by NSF, Wake Forest, or CASIS; and other key members of academia, industry, and government. The workshop is expected to leverage new relationships for additional prizes and challenges on the bioengineering pathways toward ending the organ shortage. Ultimately, the workshop will help advance the goal of making regenerated, engineered organs and tissues available to patients who need them.
