This summer, four biomedical engineering graduate students from the UH Cullen College of Engineering traveled to Seferihisar-Izmir, Turkey for the 15th International BIO-X Summer School program on Biocomplexity, Biodesign, Bioinnovation, Biomanufacturing and Bioenterpreneurship.
BIO-X aims to expose undergraduate and graduate students to new directions in computational biology, bioinformatics and molecular engineering research and encourage the dissemination of new tools and resources to the field of systems biology.
UH students Nate Piety, Aubrey Swilling, Kian Torabian and Kate Mossman were four of only 26 students selected to attend the summer program this year. They were selected for outstanding academic achievements and sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the IEEE Life Science Initiatives and the Cullen College’s Biomedical Engineering Department.
Piety, Swilling, Torabian and Mossman were accompanied to the summer program by Metin Akay, founding chair and John S. Dunn Endowed Chair Professor of biomedical engineering at the Cullen College, and UH biomedical instructional and research assistant professor Yasemin Akay, who served as the program's co-chair. While there, the students attended lectures and participated in panel discussions about bionano sensors, probes and chips, bioelectronic medicine, pharma biotechnology and healthcare entrepreneurship.
The lectures were presented by leading researchers from around the world, including Metin Sitti, director of the Max Planck Institute of Stuttgard and professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University; Colin Brenan, founder and CCO for HIFIBIO BV and editor-in-chief of IEEE Pulse; Gudrun Zahlmann, executive director of Roche, Basel; Utkan Demirci, professor and director of BAMM Lab at Stanford University; Henry Hess, professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University Professor and editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Nanobioscience; Banu Onaral, distinguished professor of biomedical engineering science at Drexel University; Murat Özgören, vice rector of Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir and executive director of DEPARK; and Waleed Abdel-Naby of Cornell University.