2020-2022 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Cellular and Molecular (CMBE) Conference

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Abstract The goal of this application is to support travel awards for students, fellows, and early stage investigators (ESI) to attend the Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (CMBE) Conference. The specific theme of the 2020 conference will be ‘Vision 2020: Emerging Technologies to Elucidate the Rules of Life. The choice of theme is intended to address the key problem of how the new emerging technologies can help us to engineer better biological systems to transform our understanding of rule of life, as well as translate new discoveries in ways that ultimately benefit human health. Recently, many new technologies have been developed such as genomic/epigenetic editing, single cell to tissue-level cell atlas, tools to manipulate extracellular environment, and methods to fabricate cell/tissue structure in 3D. Within this central theme, a broad spectrum of isolated groups has emerged from disparate disciplines but has not been fully engaged in the CMBE community. The need for this conference lies in the unique opportunity to bring these investigators together in one room for the first time to exchange ideas and brainstorm new combined strategies for pushing the field of molecular and cellular engineering forward to a new level of integration. The outcome of the conference will be increased technology sharing amongst researchers, as well as a new vision and strategic plan for engineering biological systems for basic science and clinical translation. The specific objectives of this R13 application are two-fold. The first is to provide support to eight ESI junior investigators and twelve postdoctoral fellows or graduate students, whose submitted papers will be selected for podium presentation on the basis of scientific merit, with a focus on promoting women and underrepresented minorities. The meeting will provide these investigators with essential exposure and mentoring to launch or expand their academic research careers. The second objective is to foster adoption of new technologies to the CMBE research community and promote the interdisciplinary collaboration. The meeting will provide a platform to expose researchers in engineering, chemistry, biology, and data science to the latest techniques and develop a pathway to increase the impact of CMBE research in human disease. Aim #1: Present transformative CMBE discoveries and techniques to a diverse engineering and biology audience. Invited speakers will discuss their latest research during their presentations, with a special emphasis on new principles or rules in engineering biological systems. Aim #2: Outline potential pathways to translate fundamental CMBE research into diagnostics and therapies in human disease. This will provide guidelines in how to connect researchers, and in fact the entire CMBE field, with clinicians and industry to increase translation of this research area. Outcomes will be published in a special issue of the BMES Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Journal.