NSF Award
1004847
1004847<br/>Patterson<br/><br/>The Summer Bioengineering Conference is a high quality, multidisciplinary annual biomedical engineering event sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers-Bioengineering Division. The 2010 Summer Bioengineering Conference will be held June 16-20 in Naples, Florida. A hallmark of this meeting is the interaction and true integration of rigorous engineering principles and biologic concepts. <br/><br/>NSF funds will aid in reducing student registration fees; help in reimburse some of the student travel costs, to cover in part the publication costs of the program booklet and CD, and to help fund supplies for a special workshop aimed at enabling attendees to create partnerships with K-12 teachers in developing and implementing interactive STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) lessons. <br/><br/>This conference, with a focus on biomechanical engineering, brings together all different bioengineering communities including cell and molecular engineering, tissue engineering, functional tissue engineering, etc. It is co-sponsored by several bioengineering related societies. <br/><br/>The conference format will be 6 parallel sessions of oral presentations. Approximately 1/3rd to half of the accepted papers will be presented in poster format. A booklet will provide program details to the participants of the conference. All technical presentations will be two-page extended abstracts and compiled in a CD format, distributed to all registrants. Copies of this CD will also be provided to all co-sponsoring societies. The CD will serve as the only technical proceedings of the meeting. <br/><br/>Plenary lectures will highlight an outstanding speaker with lectures relevant for all attendees. Chris Rogers, the director of the Center for Engineering Education Outreach at Tufts University, will speak about his program to use robots to bring engineering education into the younger grades. Working with LEGO, he has developed ROBOLAB, a robotic approach to learning science and math. ROBOLAB has already gone into over 50,000 schools worldwide and has been translated into 15 languages. <br/><br/>One workshop titled Grand Challenge Competition to Predict knee Loads in Vivo will build on one presented in 2009. The aim of this competition is to advance the entire field of musculoskeletal modeling by critically evaluating muscle force estimates at the knee during gait using data collected from a patient with a force-measuring knee implant. Competitors will be given access to key biomechanical data and asked to use their unique computational models to predict knee contact forces. <br/><br/>Educational workshops will build on the success of sessions presented in 2009 (obtaining the ideal faculty position and teaching undergraduate biomechanics). They will include leadership and young and mid career development. The Speed Networking program piloted in 2008 will be expanded into an industry workshop focused on connecting industry with academia. <br/><br/>In addition to the direct impact this conference will have on the mainstream bioengineering community, it will serve an important cross-fertilization role. The organizers expect to have bioengineers, engineers from other disciplines, cell and molecular biologists, biochemists, biophysicists, and other scientists participating in the meeting. In that manner, this conference will have a much broader impact than if it were to be attended by just the bioengineering community. In addition, more than 50% of the attendees will be students. This will provide a broad impact for the current times as well as for the future as these students will benefit by participation in the meeting and through the material presented by the plenary speakers and workshops. Furthermore, through the CD containing technical proceedings and conference web site, information presented at the meeting will be available to multiple societies and to the public at large.
