This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) award initiates a novel model for interdisciplinary graduate training in biophotonics across the biomedical sciences, physical sciences, and engineering. Biophotonics technologies provide powerful capabilities to probe and manipulate biological components and processes. Their utilization in the life sciences and medicine represents an estimated annual economic impact of $50 billion. This program aims to produce the next generation of biophotonics leaders to make transformative advances in the development and application of new tools for biological and medical discovery and maintain global U.S. leadership in biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device industries. Intellectual Merit: This IGERT award creates a hands-on training program that integrates physics, chemistry, engineering, and life-science principles across spatial and temporal scales. The interaction of, and collaboration between, biomedical scientists, physical scientists and engineers throughout the graduate traineeship will drive advances in biophotonics technologies, computational methods, and molecular probes to solve important problems in bio-molecular, cellular, tissue, and whole organismal systems. Broader Impacts: The BEST IGERT project will promote dissemination of an innovative education framework aimed towards a diverse cadre of scientists and engineers. Moreover, IGERT faculty and trainees will engage vigorously in a spectrum of outreach, dissemination, recruitment, retention, and career development activities that leverages the commitment of multiple units within UC-Irvine, industry in Southern California, and a nationwide network of faculty contacts, including those at minority serving institutions, to inform the public and broaden participation by students from underrepresented groups.
IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to establish new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries, and to engage students in understanding the processes by which research is translated to innovations for societal benefit.
