NSERC CREATE Training Program in Biophotonics

从了解基础生物化学到复杂的生物有机体和环境问题，生命科学的未来发展关键取决于我们是否有能力改进我们研究和操作分子和活生物体的方式，以提高精确度和减少侵入性。光的使用提供了这样的机会，特别是随着激光、光纤、显微镜、灵敏探测器和新型纳米探测器等适合的技术的增加和成熟。无论是在野外还是在实验室，生命科学家都需要更好的工具来跟踪活细胞内的事件、土壤或水中的细菌、空气中的污染物和病毒、肿瘤中的癌细胞、血液中的代谢物水平、田间转基因作物以及疟疾感染。这种工具可以用光学技术制造，事实上，生物光子学领域正处于一个转折点：尽管光子学技术已经发展起来，并极大地提高了生命科学研究、医药和几个行业的质量和生产率，但克服这些技术目前限制的需求正在迅速增长。然而，开发创新的生物光子学方法的一个主要制约因素是在生物科学和光学/光子学之间缺乏真正的跨学科专业知识--即既了解手头的生物学问题又了解可用于解决该问题的技术的专家。该CREATE计划的主要目标是在生命科学和光学/光子学之间的界面上为注册生物光子学研究的学员提供真正的跨学科培训。生物光子学培训计划预计将培训新一代高素质的人员，他们将能够开发未来的工具和方法，例如以前所未有的空间和时间分辨率研究生物和环境问题以及污染，以精致的精度操纵生物功能，并以最佳效率和最小的侵入性改进对多种医疗条件的治疗。

The future of progress in Life Sciences, from understanding basic biochemistry to complex biological organisms and environmental issues, hinges critically on our ability to improve our ways to study and manipulate molecules and living organisms with increased precision and reduced invasiveness. The use of light provides such opportunities, particularly with the increased availability and maturity of well suited technologies, such as lasers, fiber optics, microscopes, sensitive detectors and novel nanoprobes. Life scientists, in the field or in the lab, need better tools to track events inside living cells, bacteria in soil or water, pollutants and viruses in the air, cancer cells in tumors, metabolite level in blood, transgenic crops across fields, and malaria infection. Such tools can be made with optical technologies, and indeed the field of Biophotonics is at a turning point: though photonics technologies have been developed and greatly improved the quality and productivity of life science research, medicine and several industries, the demands to overcome the current limits of these technologies are growing rapidly. However, a major constraint in the development of innovative Biophotonics approaches is the lack of true transdisciplinary expertise at the interface between biological sciences and optics/photonics- that is, experts who understand both the biological problem at hand and the technology that can be used to address it. The main objective of this CREATE program is to provide trainees, enrolled in Biophotonics Research, with true transdisciplinary training at the interface between Life Sciences and Optics/Photonics. The Biophotonics Training Program is expected to train a new generation of Highly Qualified Personnel who will be able to develop the tools and approaches of the future to, for example, study biological and environmental problems and contamination with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution, to manipulate biological functions with exquisite precision, and to improve treatments of multiple medical conditions with optimal efficiency and minimal invasiveness.