This award renews funding for three years for a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Site at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation's (CCF) Lerner Research Institute, Department of Biomedical Engineering. Eight students per year, recruited from throughout the United States, will work a nominally six-month-long term at the CCF. Students will have a unique opportunity to participate in state-of-the-art research. The research focus will be engineering-related, with opportunities in biomedical fields such as cardiovascular assist and replacement, biomechanics, image processing, cell separation processes, biomedical imaging, and BioMEMS (Biomedical applications of Microelectromechanical Systems). The Intellectual Merit of this activity includes opportunities for students that are U.S. citizens or permanent residents to engage in cutting-edge research and thus make a unique research contribution through their REU project. It is anticipated that significant Broader Impact will result from this activity, in part through the program's focus on encouraging student participants to consider research-related careers as a viable career opportunity. This focus helps to impact the national need to increase the number of U.S. citizens and permanent residents that have the capacity and interest for career opportunities in research-related fields. In addition, this program seeks to address the national need to increase the participation of population groups under-represented in science and engineering in the United States by actively recruiting students from these under-represented groups.
