This three year REU Site program at the University of South Carolina will provide 10 undergraduate participants with a 10 week summer hands-on research experience focused around the theme of "Biomolecular and Biomechanical Interactions" to explore interactions involved in fundamental biological phenomena. Students will be recruited who have an interest in biomedical applications and majoring in either an engineering or basic science discipline. Faculty mentors will come from three departments within the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC) and two departments within the School of Medicine (SOM).
In addition to the research projects, students will be engaged in a series of weekly activities that will complement and enrich their research experience. These activities include hands-on workshops that introduce the students to common biomedical research techniques and informative presentations on biomedical research policies, intellectual property, and communication skills. Social activities throughout the summer will help foster a sense of community among the participants, graduate students, and faculty mentors. At the end of the summer the participants will present their research findings in the format of both a poster and an oral presentation. These presentations will be consistent with the format used at technical conferences, such as the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) annual meeting, so that students in the program will be prepared to disseminate their results to the broader research community.
What are the broader impacts of the proposed activity? Recruitment efforts will be conducted by a combination of professional networks, internet resources and student conference venues. Emphasis will be placed on recruiting from colleges and universities at which minority students represent a large fraction of the student population or where students would not typically have the opportunity to engage in research. Participants in the program will be encouraged to pursue graduate studies and research careers.
" REU site was created and hosted by the Biomedical Engineering program at the University of South Carolina (USC). This site provided a 10-week summer research experience for 10 participants each year, over the course of three years. Research activities were facilitated by a tiered mentorship structure that additionally provided graduate students with the opportunity to gain research management skills. In addition to research, participants engaged in weekly educational activities that spanned both medicine and engineering to provide participants with knowledge and skills in Biomedical Engineering research that enriched their learning experience. Planned social activities built a sense of community among mentors and participants. Each summer concluded with a symposium, during which participants presented their research findings as both a poster and an oral presentation. This enabled students to seek additional presentation opportunities at regional and national conferences. INTELLECTUAL MERIT The "Biomolecular and Biomechanical Interactions" REU site provided research training for 30 undergraduate students in four areas of biomedical engineering research: (1) protein science, (2) tissue and cellular engineering, (3) nanotechnology, and (4) computational modeling. Educational activities surrounding the formal research experiences served to broaden participants’ experimental skills and knowledge base, introduce participants to both academic and industrial research environments, and expand participants’ professional development related to pursuit of a graduate education in engineering. These activities included scientific skills such as suturing, confocal microscopy, and ultrasound, industry tours, informational workshops on ethics and intellectual property, and professional development workshops on graduate school, fellowship application, and effective presentation skills. These workshops were administered by experts across the University as well as within the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC) and the School of Medicine (SOM). Student tracking reveals that 57% of past participants who have graduated with their BS degree are currently pursing graduate education in biomedical engineering or a related field. Participants within the program were selected from a diverse applicant pool. Among participants, 57% were women and 23% were minorities. These students were from 20 different universities across the United States. In addition, 27% of participants were undergraduate students at colleges that do not offer STEM graduate programs, and thus these students did not have the opportunity to become involved in graduate research at their home institution. Research conducted by REU participants has led to 10 presentations by these students at national and regional conferences. Among these, 4 presentations were awarded in competitive events. In addition, research results have been included within 2 publications in peer-reviewed journals. Thus, this REU site successfully provided research experiences to a diverse group of students that were recognized at a national level. BROADER IMPACTS An understanding of fundamental biological phenomena will provide the foundation for future strategies that will increase the length and quality of life through preventative healthcare, early diagnostics, and therapeutics. This REU site has exposed young researchers, who will be our future scientific leaders, to the interdisciplinary and collaborative research environment needed to understand complex and intricate biological phenomena. In addition, the group of researchers involved within this REU site is represented by both gender and ethnic diversity. Furthermore, this REU site was able to provide research experiences to students from institutions with limited research activities and thus limited opportunities for undergraduate research. Young researchers were able to develop valuable, lasting relationships with faculty and graduate student mentors within the REU site that provided encouragement in their pursuit of a research career, as evidenced by the high percentage of participants who have chosen to pursue graduate school. Outside of biomedical engineering, the program provided an internship for an undergraduate student majoring in Event Planning. This student was responsible for organization of social events and ensuring that participants had access to the resources needed outside of their research. This internship experience helped this student to develop real world skills that will be applied toward their future career in event planning.
