Binghamton University, partners receive $30M NIST grant

VESTAL — The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded a five-year, $30 million grant to Binghamton University, Johns Hopkins University, and Morgan State University.

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

The professional research experience program (PREP) grant award will allow Binghamton University to send students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty to train at NIST, the university announced Aug. 9. Johns Hopkins University is the lead institution on the grant, Binghamton University said.

Every year for the next five years, Binghamton University’s department of biomedical engineering will be able to send faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate, and undergraduate students to NIST to conduct collaborative research in standard development.

 “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,” Bahgat Sammakia, VP for research at Binghamton University, said in a release. “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.”

Professor Kaiming Ye from the school’s biomedical-engineering department is Binghamton University’s principal investigator on the initiative. Ye will be working with a $5 million portion of the NIST 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 who are trained through the grant to 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,” Ye said.