Columbia BME Hosts NSF Inaugural Workshop on Multiscale Mechanobiology in Hong Kong

Professor X. Edward Guo and the Department of Biomedical Engineering are organizing and hosting the first NSF International Workshop on Multscale Mechanobiology in Hong Kong on May 15-28th, 2014.  The Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University is helping the US National Science Foundation’s Program on Biomechanics and Mechanobiology to bring world leaders from biology, physical science, engineering, and medicine together to brainstorm and develop blueprints for the future of multiscale mechanobiology, a highly interdisciplinary and grand challenge field.

Mechanical modulation of cell, tissue and organ functions has been long recognized as an important basic science and clinical biomedical issue and has generated global interests in the field of mechanobiology. Mechanobiology is a daunting biological problem, as it intrinsically transverse via multiscale of the biological systems; mechanical forces are applied to whole organisms/ organs, transmitted to tissue level, and transduced into cellular and molecular level. With an exponential growth of modern molecular biology, imaging, and computational technology, there are great opportunities to tackle this enormously challenging multiscale mechanobiology topic and make substantial breakthroughs.

The Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University is a Grand Sponsor of this important event with Professor X. Edward Guo as the Workshop Chair and Principal Investigator of an NSF grant received to support this Workshop.  Several world leaders in mechanobiology from Columbia University also actively participate in this Workshop, including Professors Michael Sheetz and Julio Fernandez from Biological Sciences, and Professors Christopher Jacobs and Helen Lu from the Department of Biomedical Engineering.  The Workshop also brings a significant number of junior and women-minority faculty members to work together and re-shape the landscape of mechanobiology.  A portion of the Workshop will be webcasted live by Columbia University.  For details, please visit Workshop Website.