Second BioPACIFIC MIP Summer School
The second annual BioPACIFIC MIP Summer School took place in-person, July 17-22.
Achievement
The second annual BioPACIFIC MIP Summer School took place in-person, July 17-22. 24 graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty from around the country attended in-person training sessions with the BioPACIFIC MIP project scientists at UCLA and UCSB covering MicroED, Additive Manufacturing, X-ray Diffraction, and automated synthetic biology and chemistry on the Living Biofoundry and robotic chemistry platforms. The attendees also connected with industry professionals and participated in professional development activities on Individual Development Plans and preparing figures for presentations and publications.
Importance of the Achievement
The Summer School advances BioPACIFIC MIP’s efforts in knowledge sharing, workforce development, and increasing diversity. One third of the attendees came from non-R1 schools; half identified as women and 5 identified as URM. In addition to the hands-on sessions, the summer school also included zoom-based sessions that were open to the broad biomaterials community, including a keynote presentation from BioMADE, a seminar on Experimental Design methodology, a discussion on design and synthesis of sequence-defined peptoid polymers, and an introduction to IBM’s Lab DCS Software Platform. The school also featured an industry career panel. All Zoom sessions will be posted on the BioPACIFIC MIP webpage.
Unique Features of BioPACIFIC MIP that Enabled this Achievement
The interdisciplinary nature of BioPACIFIC MIP promoted engagement from a variety of R1 and non-R1 institutions (4 non-R1 universities, including PREM partner New Mexico Highlands) around the country (46%, 25%, 17%, 8%, and 4% from the West, Southeast, Southwest, Northeast, and Midwest, respectively). Travel grants were provided to support attendees from outside of UCSB and UCLA. As part of their training, participants programmed the robots on the Living Biofoundry and automated chemistry platform, printed test objects on the Carbon M2 printer, and ran through samples scans on a MicroED tool and on the new BioPACIFIC MIP SAXS/WAXS system.
