BINGHAMTON, N.Y. – The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded a five-year Professional Research Experience Program (PREP) grant of $30 million to Binghamton University, Johns Hopkins University (the lead institute for the grant) and Morgan State University.

The award will allow Binghamton University to send students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty to train at NIST. Every year for the next five years, the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Binghamton University will be able to send faculty member, postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students to NIST for conducting collaborative research in standard development.

The grant will be a chance for Binghamton University to partner with NIST, a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce, and the two other universities involved to develop standards for regenerative medicine and biomaterial manufacturing.

“This exciting program will enable Binghamton students, postdocs and faculty researchers to gain vital laboratory experience and play a role in advancing the field of biomedical engineering,” said Bahgat Sammakia, vice president for research at Binghamton. “Collaboration is a vital part of any researcher’s career, and it’s fantastic to see a program that puts our students and scholars in a position to work on projects of national significance.”

The principal investigator (PI) from Binghamton University is Professor Kaiming Ye from the Biomedical Engineering Department. Ye will be working with $5 million of the grant.

Ye is also the director of Binghamton University’s Center of Biomanufacturing for Regenerative Medicine (CBRM).

“This program is a natural fit for what we’ve been doing in CBRM,” said Ye. “The center was established to identify and define standards for cell biomanufacturing and tissue biofabrication, and has been working with the scientists at Biosystems and Biomaterials Division of NIST to accomplish this.”

The three universities will also help the researchers trained through the grant connect with each other in order to further advance the field.

“The grant will provide a learning opportunity, a way to network with fellow researchers and a chance to better define the standards that all researchers will use in regenerative medicine and biomaterial manufacturing. It’s important that Binghamton University gets to be a part of that,” said Ye.