This award provides support for a three year continuing award, a renewal of the NIBIB-NSF Bioengineering and Bioinformatics Summer Institutes (BBSI) Program at Pennsylvania State University, entitled, BBSI-Penn State Biomaterials and Bionanotechnology Summer Institute (PSU-BBSI), under the direction of Dr. Peter J. Butler. The Institute will continue to host a ten week summer program for 15 undergraduate and first year graduate students for a total of 45 students throughout the three year duration of the program.
Intellectual Merit: PSU-BBSI scholars will engage in two-summers of intensive didactic exercises and hands-on research and develop proficiency in the underlying concepts and practice of cellular and molecular engineering, microscopy, and computational methods in bioengineering.
Broader Impact: Recruitment of students from science, math and engineering will enable the PSU-BBSI to increase intellectual diversity in bioengineering. Through targeted recruiting and the historical tendency of biology and bioengineering to draw more women and underrepresented minorities than other science and engineering disciplines, the Institute will increase the participation of underrepresented groups in quantitative biology.
This program is being co-funded by the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS)/Division of Chemistry (CHE), the MPS/Division of Materials Research (DMR), the MPS/Office of Multidisciplinary Activities (OMA), the Directorate for Engineering (ENG)/Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB).
