The 48th Northeast Bioengineering Conference

This award supports the 48th annual Northeast Bioengineering Conference (NEBEC), a regional conference that is historically student-centered. The conference will be held at Columbia University, New York City, New York, April 23-24, 2022. This is the first in-person NEBEC conference after the COVID pandemic and provides an opportunity to undergraduate and graduate student researchers in the field of biomedical engineering to meet and present their research to their peers. The conference has been impactful because it allows students in the Northeast region who do not have the funding to attend a national biomedical engineering meeting to present their work to a broad audience. This opportunity will encourage students to pursue graduate school and pursue a STEM career. The award will support a reduction in registration fees for undergraduate students and postdoc fellows, thus making the conference even more affordable to early career scientists, especially financially disadvantaged students.

As a conference with a strong tradition for educating the next generation of undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows in biomedical engineering, the 48th Northeast Bioengineering Conference at Columbia University will bring together a number of leaders in various bioengineering fields to inform and inspire students about progress and research opportunities in the biomedical engineering. The conference expects to attract more than 450 attendees from around the Northeast region of the United States, with 60% of which expected to be students. The Biomedical Engineering Society and IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society Student Chapters at different universities in the Northeast region are reaching out and encouraging participation by students, especially female and under-represented minority students from the region. Young Scientist Awards and New Innovator Award will be given to specifically support professional development of early career scientists. Themes of the presentations will include the following: Neural Engineering, Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering, Biomechanics, Tissue Engineering, Synthetic Biology, Computational Biology/Bioinformatics, Medical Devices, and Biophotonics / Biomedical Imaging. Additional sessions planned include a senior design competition, Future Bioengineer session, and a panel discussion about biomedical engineering education and research after COVID.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.