What a Meeting!

View the Program and CD-ROM

The 2003 Annual Meeting of the Institute of Biological Engineering
The University of Georgia
Center for Continuing Education
Athens, GA, USA
January 17-19, 2003

By Roy E. Young, Ph.D., P.E.
President

Past IBE President Brahm Verma and his colleagues in Georgia really know how to put on a meeting! Through good people, excellent programs, and an accommodating place, they presented 100 participants with a truly outstanding IBE 2003 Meeting experience in Athens, GA, January 16-19, 2003! This meeting will, no doubt, be remembered as a pivotal experience for the young Institute of Biological Engineering (IBE).

The University of Georgia faculty, students, and administrators were model hosts. Interim Senior Vice-President of Academic Affairs and Provost Arnett Mace, Jr. offered at the outset a most warm welcome and created excitement describing immediate successes at the University of GA in creatively forming a new Faculty of Engineering. The meetings staff at the Georgia Conference Center displayed professional confidence and efficiency in providing splendid accommodations and support throughout every part of the meeting. Their watchful eyes and quick responses averted distractions and allowed participants to focus fully on the learning and sharing opportunities. The Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department students treated all meeting participants to a superb barbeque cookout and were a solid anchor for IBE student members visiting from other campuses. Joel Cuello and his programming peers assembled a technical meeting par excellence from the first to the last presentation. The Department's Driftmier facilities afforded a meeting site for two highly productive Council meetings.

Keynote speaker Richard Seagrave summed it well when he said, "I have had a transforming experience! I have never felt so at home as I have these past 2-3 days in this group." Dr. Seagrave himself set the tone early with a splendidly articulated keynote presentation on Engineering Lessons from Biology. The wealth of wisdom of a full career of integrating engineering and biology was intuitively apparent. Drs. Kenneth Diller, Bernard Patten, and Timothy Fischer stimulated thought and discourse in the first-morning plenary session on "Transport Processes across Biological Domains" from nano- to eco-scales. In an afternoon feature technical session, several presenters discussed cutting edge research on "Transport in Biological Systems." Student researchers displayed their innovative research projects in an evening poster session that was judged by a panel-of-four. Three top prizes were taken: 1st Prize - Stephen Walker, Penn State University, ; 2nd Prize - Barbra Crompton, University of Georgia, ; and 3rd Prize - Ennis Veale, Penn State University, . Eight other magnetic technical sessions addressed Biological Engineering Design, Biological Engineering Education, Biomaterials and Biomimetic Materials, Biosensors, Bioenvironmental Engineering (I &II), Biochemical Systems, and Microbial Systems Engineering. A Special Tutorial by Dr. John Hetling of the University of Illinois at Chicago enlightened everyone on "Neural Engineering in Medicine and Biology", stimulating us to think how possible the seemingly impossible might really be as the interface of cells and engineered sensors merge. Mark Eiteman has preserved 73 abstracts and 10 papers on a meeting CD that can be requested from him at the University of Georgia.

It was also a landmark meeting for the business and operations of IBE as well as for exchange of engineering and science. Because of Brahm Verma's leadership of the IBE Council in October 2002 to evolve and document a first IBE Strategic Plan, the Council was able to implement focused and coordinated Action Items. Moreover, crucial planning occurred throughout the Meeting to partner with the ARDEL Group, a management services company, to provide stable infrastructure for IBE's 'headquarters' functions and to coordinate growth. I believe this partnership will enable IBE to realize its mission to be a networking and integrating forum for promoting the development of a biologically-based engineering discipline independent of applications. IBE may have approached this meeting as "a ripple in the pond," but it left with the potential to become "a wave in the sea" of biologically-based engineering! Let us proceed with the same excellence that characterized our IBE Meeting 2003!