Microfluidics in Biomedical Sciences Training Program

描述(由申请人提供)： 通过生物实验的微型化和大规模并行化，微流控领域将在生物医学科学中产生独特的广泛影响。例如，未来 微流控技术的进展可能会给疾病诊断、药物发现和病原体检测带来革命性的变化。为了实现这些影响，我们需要熟悉工程、化学、生物科学和医学的人。然而，目前这种交叉培训的人才供不应求。为了解决这一短缺问题，我们提出了一项为期五年的计划，以培养下一代生物医学微流控专家。该计划结合了来自工程、化学和医学院的教师的专业知识，以及世界一流的固态电子实验室(SSEL)和微机械集成DMA分析技术(MIDAT)设施，用于最先进的微米和纳米加工。该计划的前提是，学生应该在两个方面都有显著的培训 微流控方法及其在生物医学中的应用。这种培训加强了学科之间的沟通，确定了可解决的和临床相关的问题，并选择了适当的工具来解决这些问题。 在这个项目中，对学生的培训将包括讲课和实验室课程工作的结合，研讨会和工作坊计划，跨学科实验室轮换和共同导师，以及每年一次的研讨会，超出受训者所在部门的要求。该项目的核心课程“微流控系统中的传输”已经在两年前开发完成。工程学和基础科学的学生都已经完成了这门课程。由研究生开发和运营的研讨会和工作坊项目于去年设立，并取得了很大成功。除了内部和外部演讲者外，该系列还设有工作坊和教程，教授微流体原理。我们希望在这项提案的资助下实施额外的计划。我们认为，这种实践培训、跨学科曝光和密集的微流体研究相结合的方式，将使学生能够很好地满足日益增长的对受过高等教育和训练有素的微流体专家的需求。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The field of microfluidics is uniquely poised to make a broad impact in biomedical science through the miniaturization and massive parallelization of biological experimentation. For example, future advances in microfluidics could revolutionize disease diagnosis, drug discovery, and pathogen detection. For these impacts to be realized we need people conversant in engineering, chemistry, biological sciences, and the medical sciences. Currently, however, such cross-trained people are in short supply. To address this shortage, we propose a five-year program to train the next generation of biomedical microfluidics experts. This program combines the expertise of faculty from engineering, chemistry, and the medical school plus the world-class Solid State Electronics Laboratory (SSEL) and Micromechanical Integrated DMA Analysis Technology (MIDAT) facilities for state-of-the-art micro- and nanofabrication. The premise of the program is that students should have significant training in both the methods of microfluidics and in the biomedical applications of this technology. Such training enhance the communication between disciplines, identification of solvable and clinically relevant problems, and selection of appropriate tools to solve these problems. The training of the students in this program will involve a combination of lecture and lab course work, a seminar and workshop program, a cross-disciplinary laboratory rotation and co-mentor, and an annual symposium beyond the requirements in the trainee's home department. The core course for the program, "Transport in Microfluidic Systems," has already been developed two years ago. Students from both engineering and basic sciences have completed the course. The seminar and workshop program, developed and run by the graduate students, was established last year and has been very successful. The series has workshop and tutorial sessions teaching principles in microfluidics in addition to both internal and external speakers. We hope to put in place the additional programs with the funding of this proposal. We feel that this combination of practical training, cross-disciplinary exposure, and intensive microfluidic study will produce students well positioned to answer the growing need for highly educated and trained microfluidic experts.