Conference: Track 1: 2023 Rising BME Scholars Regional Conference

The proposed project is a three-day conference aimed at recruiting, retaining, and supporting underrepresented biomedical engineering (BME) PhD students through the postdoc, and into academic careers. The project is significant because there is a great need for a more diverse faculty pool in BME to continue to educate BME undergraduates, a group which becomes larger and more diverse every year. In addition, diversity of BME faculty increases diversity among research projects, improving the field of biomedical engineering with potential to identify solutions aimed at decreasing health disparities. The 2023 Rising Scholars in BME Regional Career Conference is a three-day conference held at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities in partnership with ten regional academic institutions. The goals of the conference are to: (1) communicate the pathways to becoming an underrepresented faculty member (2) explore opportunities offered to a BME academic; (3) realize the impacts of being an underrepresented academic on classrooms, science, and society; (4) integrate diverse perspectives into the programming (academic, medical, governmental, and business sectors); (5) obtain tools to build a successful research program; and (6) meet mentors & future collaborators to expand personal networks. The proposed project would allow for over 25 Scholars to attend, as well as five postdoctoral researchers in BME. 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.