Support for Early Career Professionals to Broaden Participation at 2024 American Society of Biomechanics Annual Meeting; Madison, Wisconsin; 5-8 August 2024

This grant provides funding Support for Early Career Professionals to Broaden Participation at 2024 American Society of Biomechanics Annual Meeting; Madison, Wisconsin; 5-8 August 2024. The new activities at the 2024 American Society of Biomechanics (ASB) Annual Meeting include: 1) Broadening Participation in Biomechanics Award among early-career professionals in priority groups (underrepresented minority groups, underrepresented geographical regions, undergraduate students, first-time ASB participants, non-research and emerging research institutions); 2) Supplement existing Diversity Travel Award to offset costs and enable early travel to participate in the pre-conference activities; and 3) Pre-conference webinars and workshops to enhance the value of the meeting to all meeting participants at no cost. Activities 2 and 3 above, specifically address pandemic-related deficits in developing conference skills among early-career professionals. The programs will be evaluated to assess their impact and inform future efforts to expand access and broaden the impact at this meeting. Ten new “Broadening Participation in Biomechanics” activities created for the 2024 ASB Annual Meeting target priority groups that are currently underrepresented at the meeting. Nineteen supplemental awards provided to existing recipients of a diversity award would enable these attendees to participate in pre-conference workshops. Additionally, the planned webinars and workshops focus on presentation skills, designing a plan for meeting activities, and to enhance networking skills for award recipients and other attendees. Evaluations will be devised to target the impact of the awards at addressing barriers to attendance. The webinars and workshop will be evaluated to assess learning and impact. Feedback from these evaluations will be used to develop future awards and programming for the conference. Dissemination plans include an article in the ASB newsletter and a scientific abstract in the 2025 Annual ASB Meeting. 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.