March 9, 2010

EWH is excited to announce the introduction of two new podium sessions for the 2010 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Fall Meeting: “Student Projects in Global Health” and “Instructional Strategies in Global Health”.  The two new sessions are open to all interested parties for competitive abstract submissions, and the BMES meeting will be from October 6-9 in Austin, Texas.  The deadline for submitting an abstract to each of these sessions is May 5, and abstracts can be submitted through the BMES website.  Each podium session will feature six 15-minute talks.

The first session, “Student Projects in Global Health” will focus on design projects by engineering students to create novel technology for developing countries.  Many engineering programs have students participating in these types of design projects as team design projects or volunteer programs.  Students from any program are welcome to apply, including students working on the EWH Projects that Matter.  We encourage all teams participating in the EWH Design Competition to submit an abstract, and the top three placing teams will present.

The “Instructional Strategies in Global Health” session is intended for educational opportunities that incorporate biomedical engineering and global health.  This includes international service trips, engineering curriculum with an emphasis on global health, and engineering volunteer activities that promote global health.  Among EWH volunteers, we encourage submissions from EWH Summer Institute alumni, EWH chapter members, and EWH kits builders.

The aim of these two new podium sessions is to expand presentation opportunities on the topic of global health at the BMES conference.  As the health care industry becomes more globalized, medical technology is rapidly expanding into emerging markets.  Medical technologies are also being created that respond to the unique engineering challenges in the developing world.  As a result, biomedical engineers are becoming more concerned with global health for both economic and humanitarian reasons.

To apply: Please submit your abstract to the BMES meeting via their online service by May 5.  The two sessions listed are available under the “Biomedical Engineering Education” track at BMES.  We encourage all interested students to select the “either podium or poster” option when submitting.  There are only 12 podium presentations, but there is a good chance that abstracts not accepted for podium talks will be invited to present a poster.  If you have questions about these sessions, please email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).  We encourage you to present your work at BMES, and we hope to see you this October at BMES in Austin!