Symposia on Bio-MEMS for Genomic and Proteomic Analysis

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): NIH support is requested to provide student travel grant support for attendance of a series of symposia at the 2005 annual meeting of the American Electrophoresis Society (AES) focusing on advances in bio-MEM and microfluidic technology in the areas of genomic and proteomic analysis. Focused sessions in these areas have not been previously offered. This conference is held annually in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Institute for Chemical Engineers (AlChE), and uniquely brings together a diverse range of researchers from the fields of biology, engineering, and computational science. We plan to use the requested funds to further encourage attendance from those outside of engineering disciplines by, for the first time, offering approximately 20 travel grants to graduate students and post-doctoral researchers in these areas. These travel grants will be instrumental in (i) allowing a broad cross section of researchers to benefit from the cross-fertilization of technical content and professional interactions available to attendees at this meeting, (ii) catalyzing interdisciplinary collaborations necessary to enable the development of next-generation genomic and proteomic analysis technology, and (iii) encouraging participation by young investigator PIs who would not normally be able to send graduate students to the conference due to limited travel fund availability. These travel grants will also allow us to greatly enhance the technical and professional content of these symposia by accomplishing the following key objectives: 1. Enhance participation by the next generation of researchers involved in the development of bio-MEMS and microfluidic technologies for genomic and proteomic analysis, particularly women and under-represented minorities. 2. Strengthen the technical content of meeting programming. 3. Establish an NIH presence at the AES and AlChE meetings. NIH has not traditionally had a strong presence at this conference, and support of these symposia will be an important step in establishing and maintaining these interactions.