College of Engineering Professor Coordinates U.S. Participation in European Conference

Dr. William J. Kelly, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, joined with eight individuals from the European Symposium on Biochemical Engineering (ESBES) to coordinate the organization’s 9^th annual gathering held in Istanbul, Turkey in late September 2012. Dr. Kelly led efforts to recruit U.S. participants and obtain sponsorship funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF). With contributions from the NSF and the American Chemical Society, fifteen U.S. scientists and engineers were able to attend this year’s conference.

This ESBES meeting provided a unique opportunity for American scientists from four different but overlapping technical areas, to interact with their European counterparts. Participants from the United States served as session chairs and made technical presentations in the areas of biopharmaceuticals, nanotechnology in bioprocessing, stem cell bioengineering and cell therapy and tissue engineering, and systems biology and metabolic engineering. Dr. Ronald Balsamo, Associate Professor of Biology in Villanova’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, was among the presenters.