The Future Patient
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Improved health and well-being took center stage last week at the 3rd International Symposium on LifeChips. More than 100 people from academia and industry gathered in the Calit2 auditorium to exchange perspectives and progress in the converging field of engineering, biosciences, physical sciences and medicine.
“LifeChips is where the technology and industry of nanotechnology and microelectronics meets the science and practice of life and health,” explained G.P. Li, director of Calit2 and the Integrated Nanosystems Research Facility (INRF).
Li, and his colleagues, coined the word “lifechips” in 2006 after receiving a five-year, $2.9 million award from the National Science Foundation’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program. Nearly three dozen graduate students have been immersed in LifeChips training, learning skills to develop technology used to identify new drugs, advance stem cell research, improve scientists’ understanding of tissue, organs, cells, DNA and other basic components of life.
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Li, and his colleagues, coined the word “lifechips” in 2006 after receiving a five-year, $2.9 million award from the National Science Foundation’s Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program. Nearly three dozen graduate students have been immersed in LifeChips training, learning skills to develop technology used to identify new drugs, advance stem cell research, improve scientists’ understanding of tissue, organs, cells, DNA and other basic components of life.
The two-day symposium not only featured work at UCI but also showcased presenters from Japan’s Toyohashi University of Technology, Korea University of Technology and Education, and several southern California companies.
“LifeChips refers both to our program at UC Irvine, as well as a type of universal research and teaching paradigm – one that embraces the overlap between life science and technology that naturally occurs at microscopic scales,” added Mark Bachman, INRF associate director, and the symposium co-organizer.
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The symposium was divided into three themed sessions: miniaturized diagnostics, biomedical microdevices, and health and wellness systems. Each session was moderated by one of the LifeChips IGERT fellows.
A banquet on the first night of the event featured a keynote address from Calit2’s founding director Larry Smarr who has spent the past ten years meticulously quantifying his own health to provide a view into the future of digitally enabled genomic medicine. “What I have learned about myself both illustrates and foreshadows the ongoing digital transformation of medicine.”
A poster session and tour of the INRF, and Calit2’s Bio-Organic Nanofabrication facility and eHealth Collaboratory rounded out the symposium experience.
--by Shellie Nazarenus