Travel support request for US participants in BIOT-ESBES meeting (Istanbul, Turkey) from September 23-26, 2012

Villanova University, Villanova PA

Investigators

Abstract

1246225/ Kelly This award from the Biotechnology, Biochemical and Biomass Engineering Program of the National Science Foundation will support the participation of thirteen US scientists and engineers who are participating in the 9th European Symposium(http://events.dechema.de/best2012) on Biochemical Engineering to be held in Istanbul, Turkey from September 23-26, 2012. Bioengineering and the separation of biomolecules are the main focus of this jointly organized event of BIOT, ESBES and ISPPP. The symposium will take place at the same time and at the same place as ECB15, the 15th European Congress on Biotechnology, allowing for the unique opportunity to visit the complete scientific program of all these congresses. The idea of this summit is to bring together the international scientific communities in these fields, to foster communication, cooperation, and cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas in analyzing the impact of the life sciences industry in addressing humanity's great challenges. This event will provide a unique platform for scientists both from industry and academia to discover new science, technologies, processes and applications. The meeting is being organized by a coordination group consisting of eight individuals from ESBES and William J. Kelly (Villanova University, PA/USA) who, as a current member of the ACS BIOT executive board, is representing ACS BIOT. A diverse ACS BIOT subcommittee was created for the purposes of identifying US scientists and engineers to invite as technical presenters and keynote speakers at the ECB15 conference in Istanbul. Intellectual Merit This conference is a pre-eminent venue in Europe for discussing research at the cutting edge of this diverse and rapidly expanding field. This particular meeting provides a unique opportunity for US scientists from not one but these four different but overlapping technical areas involved, to interact with their European counterparts. The thirteen US participants will be primarily chairing or giving technical presentations in the following areas: Frontiers and innovations in biopharmaceuticals, Nanotechnology in bioprocessing, Stem cell bioengineering and cell therapy and tissue engineering and Systems biotechnology and metabolic engineering. Five of the US speakers were invited to give keynote talks to launch sessions that would be followed by shorter technical talks in the same topical area. Broader Impacts The focus of this conference will be on research at the cutting-edge of the field of biotechnology in Europe and the US. The conference organizers have made a significant effort to invite and recruit US speakers and session chairs from groups underrepresented in science and engineering. Dr. Claudia Schmidt-Dannert from the University of Minnesota is one of the five US participants giving a keynote presentation. Furthermore, three of the thirteen US participants are from the US biopharmaceuticals industry and the remaining seven are US academics representing universities spanning the US from west to the east coasts. As a result of this first collaboration between BIOT and ESBES, there is the opportunity for increasing exchange between researchers in the flagship scientific organizations in Europe and the US in the areas of biotechnology. This is a first step in increased interaction between these two important research communities.