Student and Postdoc Travel Support for DNA28

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This award provides student travel support for the 28th International Conference on DNA Computing and Molecular Programming (DNA28), held at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, August 8-12, 2022. This support will enable a new generation of student researchers to attend the conference, present their work, learn from leading experts in the field, and interact with students at other institutions, fostering a sense of worldwide community of scientific enquiry. This conference emphasizes topics that bridge computation, biology, and nanotechnology and attracts top researchers in the fields of computer science, mathematics, chemistry, molecular biology, and nanotechnology. The scope of topics includes control of molecular folding and self-assembly to construct nanostructures; demonstration of switches, gates, devices, and circuits with biomolecules; molecular motors and molecular robotics; computational processes in vitro and in vivo; studies of fault-tolerance and error correction; synthetic biology and in vitro evolution; DNA data storage; software tools for analysis, simulation, and design of molecular systems; a range of applications in engineering, physics, chemistry, biology, and especially medicine (including approaches to smart therapeutics with cell-specific, programmable, drug delivery).Conference organizers plan to support up to 20 successful student applicants, who are either US citizens or students at US institutions. Emphasis will be placed on students whose institutions are under-resourced and would otherwise not be able to send them to the conference, and students presenting their research results at the conference. Conference organizers will invite applications in regular conference announcements. A diverse committee of conference organizers and external referees will then make the selection from the received applications. The awards will provide support toward registration, travel, and accommodation. The availability of this support will encourage the participation of members of groups underrepresented in molecular computing research, especially those who are delivering oral or poster presentations at the conference, and graduate and undergraduate students who are otherwise unable to afford attending this conference. As this is the first in-person DNA conference planned for several years, this support will be vital to enable a vibrant and diverse conference.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.