CBT@EmTech - CardioVascular Biomechanics Training Program at Emory and GaTech

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Project Abstract/Summary This T32 proposal is for the support of an interdisciplinary, pre-doctoral training program entitled “Cardiovascular Biomechanics and Mechanobiology Training Program at Emory University and Georgia Tech” (CBT@EmTech). The goal of CBT@EmTech is to develop an innovative graduate program to train the next generation of cardiovascular leaders at the intersection of cardiovascular biomechanics, mechanobiology, medical imaging, computational modeling, medical devices, therapeutics discovery and delivery, and data science to address translationally relevant cardiovascular biomechanics, pathophysiology, therapies, and diagnostics. The Program is built on a long history of ground-breaking research applying biomechanics to the field of cardiovascular disease at Emory and Georgia Tech. The Program leverages our long-standing successes in research and education in cardiovascular biomechanics and medicine across Emory and Georgia Tech. CBT@EmTech trainees will be recruited from an applicant pool of >80 diverse groups of eligible students, including women and underrepresented minorities from the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at Georgia Tech and Emory and the Interdisciplinary Bioengineering (BioE) Graduate Program at Georgia Tech. BioE graduate students come from various home Departments, including Electrical and Computer and Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Departments of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Chemistry at Emory. We request support for six students per year over five years to provide two years of support for each student in years 1 and 2 of their PhD program. In addition to the T32-supported positions, two additional students per year will be supported, one by Emory and the other by Georgia Tech, to help further train a diverse group of students. All the trainees will do lab rotations in the first year to select a mentor and co-mentor, one from medicine/biology and the other in engineering/data science, or vice versa, or one from biology/engineering/data science and the other from medicine. This will train and encourage our students to undertake multidisciplinary, collaborative, and translational research. Our trainees will take 1) foundational courses in biosciences, engineering, and data science, 2) integrative biomedical engineering courses, 3) ethics and diversity training, 4) communication and professional development, and 5) the Advanced Seminars in Cardiovascular Biomechanics and Medicine class that include clinical observations. CBT@EmTech will enhance the diversity of the workforce in the cardiovascular biomechanics and disease field and train them to be inclusive leaders. Our trainees from diverse backgrounds are expected to become leaders in addressing unmet translational and clinical needs in cardiovascular biomechanics, pathophysiology, therapies, and diagnostics.