This award supports a research workshop, organized jointly by Mathias Lösche (Carnegie Mellon University) and Jaime Ruiz-Garcia (Universidad Autónoma de San Luis PotosÃ), to highlight recent progress in our understanding of self-assembly processes in the life sciences and to identify implications derived from this knowledge for design of synthetic materials. The meeting will take place in an interdisciplinary setting that focuses on the interface between biological physics and quantitative biology. An important goal is to provide an environment for the establishment and continuation of collaborative research initiatives between the Mexican and U.S. scientific research communities working in these areas. The workshop will be held in Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico, June 8 to 11, 2010. The Mexican science agency CONACYT will support the Mexican participants. This workshop will include research presentations and discussions focused on the following topics of relevance in biology: Supramolecular Biological Structures Controlled by Nucleic Acids; Colloidal Self-Assembly in Functional Materials and Membranes and Soft Matter in Reduced Dimensionality. It will foster communication and contacts between a diverse group of senior researchers, which are the leaders in their respective fields, and young researchers, such as tenure-track faculty, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students from the U.S. and Mexico. In the selection of invited attendees, proper attention has been paid to bringing together a group of researchers in which women and minority faculty members are well represented. Similar efforts are being made to the selection of student participants. This award is being jointly funded between the Division of Materials Research and the Office of International Science and Engineering of NSF.
The international Workshop brought together researchers from Mexico and the U.S. with research interests in various aspects of Biology and Materials Science. This research community is distinctively inter-disciplinary, with participants coming from Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Engineering departments. The event focused on three topics: – Supramolecular Biological Structures Controlled by Nucleic Acids – Colloidal Self-Assembly in Functional Materials and – Membranes and Soft Matter in Reduced Dimensionality and fostered discussions of scientific developments at the forefront of our understanding of biological and colloidal self-assembly, in particular from the perspective of interdisciplinary interactions between Physics and Biology. Emphasis was placed on the active participation of junior scientists (non-tenured faculty or post-doctoral associates). 17 of the 25 non-Mexican participants and 14 of 29 Mexican participants were junior researchers. Junior participants were given ample opportunity to present their work. Poster presenters were given the opportunity to introduce their work in short oral statements to the workshop plenum. This workshop has been jointly funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF-OISE 0963709) and CONACyT, the Méxican Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia. More info at www.cmu.edu/biolphys/SABMS/SABMS2010.html. xox xox xox xox xox xox xox xox xox xox xox xox xox xox xox xox xox xox xox
