Participant Support for Biomechanics Career Kickstarter Award for the 2025 American Society of Biomechanics Annual Meeting; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; 13-16 August 2025

This grant provides support for participant costs to develop two new initiatives during the 2025 American Society of Biomechanics Annual Meeting to be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 13-16 August 2025. 1) Develop a travel award called the “Biomechanics Career Kickstarter Award.” This award will prioritize first-time attendees and undergraduate students. 2) Speakers will be recruited to provide pre-conference webinars and workshops. Students who are typically unable to attend professional conferences will primarily benefit. The scientific meeting will contain biomechanics programming including keynote talks, oral presentations, and poster presentations. The meeting will also include activities to enable informal scientific discussions. The expected outcomes for the awardees will be career development through stronger scientific and networking skills. This meeting will enable workforce development that serves the biomechanics and health research community. The new “Biomechanics Career Kickstarter Award” will be awarded to 10 applicants so that they can attend the 2025 American Society of Biomechanics Annual Meeting. The conference highlights and disseminates research across engineering biomechanics and mechanobiology, about the development and evaluation of rehabilitation engineering technologies, and research that integrates across intent, motor output, and technology. An advertising strategy will reach potential applicants beyond the society’s current community. Sites with “research experience for undergraduate” programs and regional meetings associated with the American Society of Biomechanics will expand the applicant pool beyond regular attendees. Programming (mentorship, webinars, and workshops) will prepare awardees for attending a scientific conference and ease their path into the society community. A workshop will focus on networking skills and pre-conference webinars will enable awardees to plan for the meeting. Evaluations will measure the impact of programming on attendees and on the awards on awardees. Dissemination will include a scientific abstract reporting the impacts of our evaluations. This meeting will provide awardees with a first step towards a career in biomechanics and enrich our understanding on how travel awards and professional development programming influences students’ ability to benefit from scientific meetings. 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.