GEM4 Summer Schools
Available Summer Schools
Summer 2006: Infectious Disease
Summer 2007: Cancer
Each year, GEM4 Summer School is hosted at a different participating institution for two weeks. Strong laboratory experience and exposure to local research facilities is provided in addition to introductory and advanced tutorials.
The objective of the summer schools is to educate researchers and graduate students in the fundamentals of cell and molecular biomechanics and its applications in medicine, to provide an intense learning experience, and to facilitate interactions among engineers, biologists and clinicians. The goals are to help train a new generation of researchers with in-depth knowledge of biomechanics and molecular medicine and to help scientists and clinicians apply biomechanical approaches in biomolecular, cellular, tissue-level, animal-model and clinical studies.
The philosophy of the summer school is to emphasize basic concepts and problem-based learning in cell and molecular biomechanics, and integrating lecturing, in-class discussion, case-studies and hands-on experience. All teaching activities will have a focus on a particular, broad disease type each year: for example, infectious disease (2006), cancer (2007), and cardiovascular disease (2008). The core teaching material may remain the same, but the examples, case-studies and lab work may be chosen based on the focus topic. The summer school will also include laboratory sessions and interactions with local hospitals and medical research facilities.
The summer school is expected to be particularly appealing to:
- Engineering or biology faculty and post-docs/researchers who wish to expand their research horizons and move into biomechanics and related disease studies;
- Students who want to learn molecular and cell biomechanics, but could not do so at their own institutions, or who want to get a different perspective from what they have learned and a closer link to disease studies;
- Medical researchers who have the need to learn some basic biomechanics and are interested in applying biomechanics to their clinical investigations.
