IRES: Portugal Undergraduate Research Experience in Biotechnology and Life Sciences (PURE BLISS)

This IRES project entitled "Portugal Undergraduate Research Experience in Biotechnology and Life Sciences (PURE BLISS)" provides an intensive international summer research experience for undergraduate students through high-impact interdisciplinary training in biotechnology, biomanufacturing, and bioengineering research that applies basic sciences to pharmaceutical, food, and health applications. There are unmet workforce needs in these fields as recently recognized by the Presidential Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy. The IRES PURE BLISS project directly addresses this national need by providing bioengineering-focused undergraduate research training, especially to students from groups traditionally under-represented in STEM. Uniquely, this training is being provided by internationally renowned scientists at the Instituto de Bióloga Experimental e Tecnológica (iBET) in Oeiras, Portugal (a suburb of Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal). The specific objectives of this IRES project include: (1) introduction of bioengineering to undergraduate students and developing related technical skills, (2) increasing student interest in bioengineering careers and research, (3) increasing the students' intercultural maturity via interactions with international scientists and researchers, and (4) expanding the diversity of the undergraduate student researchers with a special emphasis of recruiting from under-represented groups in STEM. The host institution, iBET, is uniquely positioned to provide a full bench-to-scale research environment for both upstream and downstream bioprocessing research at a single site. The student participants' access to such an integrated and comprehensive research environment is poised to catalyze the development of the future U.S. workforce. Furthermore, they are involved in highly relevant and societally important research projects, such as biomanufacturing therapeutic vesicles, regenerative medicine tissue products, and natural bioactive compounds, and thus are addressing current scientific needs in biomanufacturing. The effectiveness of these professional development activities and the achievements of the project objectives are being measured and assessed through a variety of quantitative and qualitative data collection and evaluation surveys. 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.