IGERT: Integrated Training Program in Biomechanics

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This IGERT project is a multidisciplinary program of education and research focused on biomechanics. Biomechanics is the study of phenomena in biology that is broadly concerned with the mechanical characteristics of cells, tissues, and organs. It deals with both structural aspects - for example, the strength of the cytoskeleton and the Young's modulus of the cell - and dynamic aspects - the motion of fluids in biological microchannels and the action of biological micromotors. Understanding these phenomena and processes requires combining methods, tools, and styles of research from biological and physical sciences, and from engineering. The IGERT program is intended to offer Ph.D. students an education designed to make them proficient in the methods of both biological and physical sciences. The research component of the program will generate improved understanding of important and relatively unexplored biological processes; it will also use this understanding to design inanimate systems that mimic aspects of the biological systems (biomimetic systems). The educational component will combine thesis programs that require co-advisors from biological and physical science and engineering, research rotations through laboratories with different styles of research, and active interaction among students with different backgrounds. The program will support 10 students per year, and involve 20 faculty at Harvard in the departments of biology, chemistry, and physics, the Division of Applied Science and Engineering, and the Medical School. Many of these research groups already collaborate in other projects: the proposed program will strengthen and extend these collaborations, to the benefit of both students and faculty. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the multidisciplinary backgrounds and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. In the fifth year of the program, awards are being made to twenty-one institutions for programs that collectively span the areas of science and engineering supported by NSF.