Whitaker Foundation 2003 Annual Report - Advanced Materials ...

Although most of our grant programs no longer accept applications,we continue monitoring annual progress on all our grants, ranging fromfellowships to major construction awards. We are also examining hownew, short-term initiatives may have long-term benefits. For example, thefoundation plans a major conference on biomedical engineering educationin early 2005. This conference will be a follow-up to the BiomedicalEngineering Educational Summit Meeting held in 2000. The new summitmeeting will describe educational innovations over the past years, identify“best practices,” and examine how the needs of biomedical engineeringindustry should be served by the curriculum.We are often asked about the prospects of biomedical engineeringafter 2006. We believe that the prospects are bright. There is now analmost universal recognition that advances in biology and medicine arelinked closely to contributions from the physical sciences, mathematics,and engineering. Old and new funding agencies emphasize the need forcross-disciplinary research, and the demand for people with a strongmultidisciplinary training is growing. While Whitaker support might bemissed by some faculty members starting their careers, opportunitiesfor alternative funding have increased substantially over the past years.Since the field is now firmly established, we are sure that talented andwell-educated biomedical engineers will succeed!This is the 10th in our series of our annual reports. It continues thetradition of focusing on a particular disease or research area wherecontributions of biomedical engineers have been substantial. In the past,we have dealt with medical imaging, tissue engineering, drug delivery,the heart, the brain, and biomechanics, among others. This year we areexamining diabetes and how biomedical engineers are involved in treatingthe disease and its complications. It is instructive to notice the trendof moving from purely technological solutions to those that are biologicallybased, taking advantage of increased basic understanding of theunderlying disease. This trend characterizes all of biomedical engineering.Our 2002 annual report started to examine the foundation’s programsand its accomplishments by considering its Research Grants program forstarting faculty members. This 2003 report describes the results ofprograms designed to enhance the education of students. The 2004report will examine our major institutional awards. Our final report in2005 will be a retrospective, but with a look toward the future. 3