NASA Astronaut Headlines NJIT Bioengineering Conference:
WHAT:New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) will host a national bioengineering conference whose keynote speaker, a NASA astronaut, will discuss the recent Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Other speakers include bioengineers from Harvard, Yale, NJIT and other top universities. The conference will feature a high school robotics competition, with student teams designing robots that can perform surgical tasks.
WHEN: Saturday, March 22, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m., and Sunday, March 23, 8:30 a.m. - 3 p.m.
WHERE:Kupfrian Hall, on the NJIT Newark campus, at the intersection of Central Avenue and Summit Street.
WHO: Garrett Reisman, a NASA astronaut and mechanical engineer, who will talk about the “The Bioengineering of Space Flight.” Reisman, born in Parsippany, is stationed in the robotics branch of the Johnson Space Center.
BACKGROUND: The 29th Northeast Bioengineering Conference, sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) Medicine and Biology Society, annually unites the nation’s top university researchers in the field of biomedical engineering. High-school teams competing in the robotics competition are Perth Amboy High School, Perth Amboy; Toms River High School, Dover Township; North Freehold Borough High School, Freehold; Westside High School, Newark; High Point Regional High School, Sussex; Manalapan High School, Manalapan; Cape May County Technical High School, Cape May Court House; Bergen Academies, Hackensack; Union County Magnet High School, Scotch Plains; Ramapo High School, Franklin Lakes; and Middlesex County Academy for Science, Mathematics and Engineering Technologies, Edison.