NSF Student Travel Grant for the International Workshop on Bio-Design Automation (IWBDA)

The 17th International Workshop on Bio-Design Automation (IWBDA) brings together researchers from electronic design automation and synthetic biology to tackle challenges in biology and medicine. Electronic design automation is the practice of using computer software to build complex electronics and synthetic biology is the forward design of novel biological systems using engineering principles. The goal of IWBDA is to make biology more easily, robustly, reliably, and predictably engineered which will lead to advances in biology and medicine including advances in disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention. The topics that IWBDA covers include design methodologies for synthetic biology, standardization of biological components, biosecurity in lab automation processes, bio-preparedness through bio-design automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning in synthetic biology, computer-aided design tools and automation for engineering biology, biofoundries and their impact on synthetic biology, synthetic biology education and outreach. This award provides travel assistance for ten undergraduate and graduate students to attend this workshop to present research, participate in a computer programming competition, and network with a large community of industrial and academic researchers. The supported students will go on to form the foundation of the field in the future and strengthen the US biotechnology industry. IWBDA 2025 takes place in Worcester, Massachusetts from September 7th to September 10th. The students supported will join a variety of researchers from electronic design automation and synthetic biology, engaging in activities that do not exist elsewhere. They will have access to between twelve and fifteen technical talks over three days, two invited lectures, ten to twenty posters, multiple group discussion sessions, and a featured student programming competition (BDAthlon). 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.