REU Site on Biological Materials and Processes (BioMaP)

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Abstract for REU Site on Biological Materials and Processes (BioMaP)Institution: Iowa State UniversityPrincipal Investigator: Balaji NarasimhanThis REU award for a Site in Biological Engineering, specifically in the areas of Biological Materials and Processes (BioMaP), supports 10 undergraduates each year for three years in a 10-week summer research experience at Iowa State University. The cross-disciplinary nature of BioMaP enables students to discover the exciting biology/materials interface. The faculty team is diverse, has broad research interests, and an outstanding record of mentoring undergraduate students.A unique component of the program is the collaboration with the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM) in Mexico, which will build on an existing partnership between the two institutions and provide students with the experience of performing research in a foreign laboratory. In an increasingly smaller world, engineers must be prepared to understand other cultures, other ways of doing business, and expand their exportable and language skills. This research experience will equip students with these critical attributes as they enter the real world.The integration of new techniques is opening the door to the resolution of biological questions (such as the functioning of the immune system) deemed intractable only a few years ago. This new knowledge together with the deciphering of human, animal and plant genomes has sparked a biological revolution. The result is an explosion of entirely new industries in healthcare, medicine, food and nutrition, chemical synthesis, materials, and agriculture. Nanotechnology allied with biotechnology are the underpinning technologies pushing the rapid advances in genomics, combinatorial chemistry, biocatalysis, enzyme engineering, bioinformatics, and tissue engineering. In this exciting scenario, chemical engineers are making key research contributions at the interface of biology, chemistry, and engineering. This new paradigm of education and research demands that undergraduates be exposed to rich problems that dwell at the interfaces and experience the excitement associated with research and discovery.