BECON MEETING MINUTES

BECON MEETING – July 21, 2004

Minutes

The NIH Bioengineering Consortium (BECON) met on Wednesday, July 21, from 3 to 4:30 PM in Room 711 at the Rockledge 2 Building on Rockledge Drive in Bethesda , Maryland . The following text provides the minutes of this meeting.

Summary of BECON/BISTIC 2004 Symposium – This year's BECON/BISTIC Symposium on clinical decision-making was held at the Natcher Conference Center on June 21-22. About 400 people attended this meeting which included plenary presentations, topical breakout sessions, and outreach sessions on the final afternoon. A subcommittee is following up on this meeting and current plans are to post the PowerPoint files of the plenary presentations on the BECON Web site and to prepare a summary document of the meeting recommendations.

BRP Letters of Intent - About 70 notices of intent have been received for the August 20 deadline of the Bioengineering Research Partnership (BRP) Program (PAR-04-023).

BRP Grantee Meeting – The Fourth BRP Grantee Meeting is scheduled for July 29-30 at the Bethesda Hyatt Hotel. The agenda includes plenary presentations, oral presentations from second and fifth year grantees, poster presentations from other grantees, a “NIH Update” session, and discussion.

BECON BRP Subcommittee – A BECON subcommittee aimed at evaluating the BRP Program has been established and will continue for the next several months.

BECON Symposium Topic Subcommittee - A BECON subcommittee has been formed to focus on topics for future BECON symposia.

BECON and NIH Team Science Issues – Activities to address team science issues identified during the BECON 2003 symposium continued after the June BECON meeting. Definitions of co-PI and research partnerships developed by a BECON subcommittee and possible applications and implementation plans will be discussed with other NIH staff.

Update on the MATES – A status report on the Multi-Agency Tissue Engineering and Science (MATES) Consortium was presented and discussed.

Next BECON Meeting - The August BECON meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, August 18, from 3 to 4:30 PM in Room 7111 of the Rockledge 2 Building. A preliminary agenda will be available about a week before the meeting.