ECCS - 1339443 STEM Student Travel Grants for Bioelectronics Training Nagle, H. Troy North Carolina State University
The objective of this proposal is to request Travel funds for graduate students to attend a Bioelectronics Tutorial Track in the emerging field of bioelectronics and to attend the 2013 IEEE Sensors Conference which is being held in Baltimore, MD. The tutorial will be held on Nov.3 and will involve leading experts in the field and will offer four interrelated tutorials , two in the morning and two in the afternoon. A motivational luncheon speaker will also be included. Travel expense reimbursements of $1000 will be made to each awardee. Travel expenses up to $1,000 will be awarded. The awardees will be U.S. citizens or permanent residents who are not currently supported by an NSF ERC. The students will also attend the IEEE Sensors conference where many of the leaders in the field will be delivering lectures and presenting papers. This will be an excellent opportunity for the students to get exposed to one of the major emerging programs in science and engineering, will expose the student to many of the leaders in the field and will have an impact on their decision to continue In graduate studies. We will need all the manpower we can generate over the next few years in this field and this is an excellent way for getting them on board. There is no doubt that many of them will be leaders in the future. Bioelectronics is fundamental to interfacing of engineering and biology and advances in this field will lead to the solution of many of the problems facing our society including genetic medicine, health care, environmental sensing, structural monitoring and homeland security. Thus advances in this field will have a tremendous societal impact. Prof. Nagel has proposed an excellent program for this tutorial and conference attendance and I strongly support funding. The budget is reasonable and the great majority of funds will go towards supporting the students. A small amount is allocated for support staff which is needed to administer the program which is supposed to include travel plans and other arrangements for 20 students. I therefore highly recommend support of this request Funding of $29,575 will be provided by: ECCS-07010007-7564 (George Haddad) George Haddad Program Director (CCSS/ENG)
Currently registered students at US academic institutions were awarded travel grants of up to $1,000 to participate in a Bioelectronics training program held in conjunction with IEEE SENSORS 2013 in Baltimore, Maryland, on November 3, 2013. The travel grants were widely advertised to sensor professional in academia across the United States. The student awardees were US citizens or Green Card holders studying science and engineering at both the graduate and undergraduate level. A special track in the conference's traditional tutorials program was organized for these students. Twenty-four travel awards were made. Travel to Baltimore, hotel expenses, and conference registration were subsidized. These travel awards supplemented a student's locally available funding and encouraged greater total student participation in this important event. During the tutorials, each student was provided a TI SensorTag Development Kit with which they could experiment with seven different sensors interacting with their smartphones (ambient temperature, infrared temperature, X-Y-Z accelerometers, humidity, magnetometer, barometer, and a X-Y-Z gyroscope). Six months after the event, the students were asked to rate various aspects of the event. Fifteen of the 24 awardees responded. Twelve rated the event as better than expected and noted improvement in their bioelectronics skills. Fourteen reported moderate or extreme overall satisfaction. All 15 found the event to be well structured, clearly presented, and the information useful for their future careers.
