Microfluidics in Biomedical Sciences Training Program

描述(由申请人提供)：微流体学领域通过生物实验的微型化和大规模并行化，有望在生物医学科学中产生广泛的影响。例如，未来在微流控方面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、生物和医学的个人。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、物理和医学院的教师的专业知识，以及世界级的固态电子实验室(SSEL)，用于最先进的微米和纳米制造。该计划的前提是，学生应该在微流控方法和这项技术的生物医学应用方面进行重要的培训。这种培训加强了学科之间的沟通，确定了可解决的生物医学和临床问题，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课程作业、系列研讨会、实践工作坊、年度研讨会、期刊俱乐部和跨学科实验室轮换或合作。所有这些活动都超出了受训人员所在部门的要求。该项目的核心课程《微流控科学与工程》已经教授了几年，并取得了成功。研讨会和工作坊最初是由研究生独立于培训计划开发的，显示了研究生对这一主题的热情。我们认为，这种实践教学、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培训的微流体专家的需求。 公共卫生相关性：这项应用旨在培训科学家和工程师将微流控技术应用于生物医学科学。微流体可以控制微米级的流体。这项技术具有通过诊断、支持新研究和药物发现等许多应用领域改善医疗保健的潜力。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The field of microfluidics is uniquely poised to make a broad impact in biomedical sciences through the miniaturization and mass 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 individuals conversant in engineering, chemistry, biology, and 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, physics, and the medical school plus the world-class Solid State Electronics Laboratory (SSEL) 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 enhances the communication between disciplines, identification of solvable biomedical and clinical problems, and selection of appropriate tools to solve these problems. The training of the students in this program will involve a combination of course work, seminar series, hands-on workshop, annual symposium, journal club, and cross-disciplinary lab rotation or collaboration. All of these activities are beyond the requirements of the trainee's home department. The core course for this program "Microfluidic Science and Engineering" has been taught for several years with success. The seminar and workshop were originally developed by graduate students independent of the training program showing the enthusiasm of the graduate students for this topic. We feel that this combination of practical teaching, cross- disciplinary exposure, and intensive microfluidic study will produce students well positioned to answer the growing need for highly educated and trained microfluidics experts. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This application seeks to train scientists and engineers to utilize microfluidic technology for application to biomedical science. Microfluidics enables control of fluids at micron dimensions. The technology has potential for improving healthcare through many application areas including diagnostics, enabling new research, and drug discovery.