This award provides funds to support travel awards for student/fellows and young independent investigators (Rising Stars) for the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Joint Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (CMBE) and Advanced Biomanufacturing (ABioM) Conference; New Orleans, Louisiana Jan. 6-10, 2016. Advanced Biomanufacturing is an emerging field and focuses on studying theories and technologies of manufacturing bio-related products for medicine and industry. A primary part of biomanufacture is mechanobiology, directly relevant to the Biomechanics and Mechanobiology program (BMMB)of the NSF. Using living cells in advanced manufacturing will require a much improved understanding of mechanobiology to produce appropriate products. Supporting the development of young investigators in this area is of fundamental importance to successful future research.
The advanced manufacturing theme of the 2016 conference is related to the mission of the Biomechanics and Mechanobiology program and also is directly in line with the mission of Biomedical Engineering which is partially supporting this request. Graduate students/postdoctoral fellows will be selected by the organizing committee to receive Student/Fellow Awards and to present short talks, which will be integrated into the sessions. In addition, the junior independent investigators will be selected for a special Rising Star session, which will take place on the first day of the meeting in order to showcase their work. The award will be used to provide partial support to students, post-doctoral fellows, young investigators (Rising Stars), and under-represented minorities.
