This award provides support for graduate-student travel to the Second International Conference on Plasma Medicine, ICPM-2, which will be held in San Antonio, TX, on March 16-20, 2009. NSF funds are targeted toward the participation of graduate students at the meeting, aiding travel of approximately 25 students.
Plasma research is a multi-disciplinary field encompassing diverse disciplines in engineering and science. The PI contends that recent demonstrations of plasma technology in treatment of living cells, tissues, and organs are creating Plasma Medicine, a new field at the intersection of plasma science and technology with biology and medicine. The stated goal of this conference is to create a forum that brings professionals from the field of plasma together with medical professionals, biologists, and biochemists in order to develop a common language, better define key challenges, open questions, and move toward effective solutions.
This conference will allow plasma and medical researchers to exchange ideas in a stimulating technical forum. The intellectual merit of this activity arises from the participation of plasma and biomedical-engineering experts from across the United States and from various countries, dissemination of their technical findings, their communications with students, and their visions of future research directions.