PROPOSAL NO.: CTS-0502767 PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS: C-M HO INSTITUTION: UCLA
INTERNATIONAL BIO-NANO-INFORMATION (BNI) FUSION CONFERENCE
This grant is for partial funding for the Bio-Nano-Information (BNI) Fusion Conference to be held in Marina del Rey, CA on July 20-22, 2005. NSF support will pay travel expenses and meeting costs for graduate students, and enable approximately 40 students to attend the conference. The intellectual merit of the proposed conference involves primarily the exchange of technical information in an emerging area. Observation of processes in nature (e.g. cellular function at the nano scale resulting in macroscopic structures and higher-order functionalities) leads towards a compelling approach consisting of fusing biotechnology, nanotechnology, and information science, which will enrich the development of revolutionary application-specific technologies. Fusion of bio-nano-informatics will culminate in systemic architectures that will rival those occurring in nature. Fundamental comprehension of how the interplay of these three areas can be manipulated on the molecular level to produce enhanced, emergent properties and will address the question of how much further it is possible to "push the envelope". The broader impacts of the proposal are as follows. Making advancements in emergent functionality through technology fusion is an ambitious and challenging task, which needs the participation of researchers from around the world. This conference will bring leading researchers together to share their accomplishments in bio, nano and informatics technologies, as well as to explore the potential of BNI fusion. The BNI Fusion Conference will provide students a unique opportunity to experience lectures given by preeminent specialists covering wide varieties of interdisciplinary fields. A poster session will be arranged for young researchers to present their findings. In addition to the proceedings (published on CD-ROM to facilitate multimedia) provided to each participant at the time of the symposium, selected papers are expected to be published in a special issue of an archival journal.
