Symposium Will Highlight Multidisciplinary Work in Biological Design
The ENG Biological Design Center Kickoff Symposium and Charles Cantor Lecture at the Questrom School of Business June 1 marked the center’s official opening, with a lunch and poster session at the new Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering. Bioinformatics doctoral candidates David Bray (ENG’22) (left) and William Hackett (ENG’23) reflect on the electronic board posters presented. Photo by Cydney Scott
Boston University College of Engineering will mark the official opening of the Biological Design Center (BDC) with a celebration featuring a kickoff symposium and reception on June 1. The BDC, which will be housed within the Center for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering (CILSE), aims to understand, control, and reengineer how biological components work to solve important societal problems, from environmental sustainability to healthcare, using synthetic biology.
The symposium will feature an array of speakers from academia and industry who will present on biological science and technology as well as their work with diverse aspects of biological design ranging from molecular-scale investigations to tissue-level engineering. Professor Bonnie Bassler, chair of the Microbiology Department at Princeton University, will headline the Charles Cantor Lecture, named in honor of Emeritus Professor Charles Cantor (BME) who pioneered a method for separating large DNA molecules, an important tool for biological research. Bassler’s presentation, “Bacterial Quorum Sensing and its Control,” will focus on her research in developing novel therapies combating bacteria by disrupting cellular communication.
The day’s events will be categorized by presentations covering molecular, cellular and tissue design. Speakers from academia and industry include:
Sangeeta Bhatia, MD, PhD
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Stephen C. Blacklow, MD, PhD
Harvard Medical School
Doug Johnson, PhD
Pfizer
Narendra Maheshri, PhD
Ginkgo Bioworks
Geraldine Hamilton, PhD
Emulate
David Kaplan, PhD
Tufts University
The day will also include talks and posters from BDC scientists, sharing research projects being developed in the Center. The event is open to the scientific community. Registration is free but space is limited.
For more information and to view the full schedule of events, visit the event homepage. Register for the event here.