Professor Azadeh Yazdan, Professor Kelly Stevens, and Professor Cole DeForest, all from the UW department of bioengineering, have been named co-chairs of major bioengineering conferences, coming up this summer.
Professor Azadeh Yazdan will co-chair the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBS 2026) in Toronto. Her co-chairs will be Professor Guy Dumont of the University of British Columbia and Milos Popovic of the University of Toronto. The society includes more than 10,000 members around the world, and its 48th annual conference’s theme will be “Engineer Sustainable and Equitable Healthcare.” UW Bioengineering’s Professor Paul Yager is scheduled to speak at the conference.
Professor Kelly Stevens, who is also director of the UW Biomaterials HUB, will co-chair Signal Transduction by Engineered Extracellular Matrices GRC, a leading forum for sharing cutting-edge research on the biology and engineering of cell-ECM crosstalk. The conference will be held in May in Switzerland. Her co-chair will be the University of California Santa Barbara’s Professor Beth Pruitt. UW Bioengineering’s Professors Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert and Elizabeth Wayne are scheduled to speak at the conference.
Finally, Professor Cole DeForest will co-chair Bioinspired Materials GRC, focusing on biomimetic solutions that have not yet been found, as well as areas where biomimicry leads to engineered solutions that have no natural counterpart. The conference will be held in June in Switzerland. His co-chair will be the University of Fribourg’s Professor Ullrich Steiner, and Bioengineering’s Professor Nancy Allbritton is scheduled to speak at the conference.