Three scientists in lab coats working with laboratory equipment.

OUR WORK

community connectivity

Community Meetings
BME Unite offers six virtual community meetings per academic year aligned with our pillars of Community, Intentionality, Education, and Resources and are typically attended by ~50 - 100 nationwide BME faculty. We also have in-person organizing events throughout the year held in tandem with other meetings, such as the Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Meeting and Humanity Unlocking Biomaterials meeting.

BME Unite Slack
Join by emailing bmeunite@gmail.com

Joining the Slack Workspace will also put you on our BME UNITE email list so you can stay up to date on all events.

Group of people smiling and posing together indoors

 Image Credit:  Brian Aguado.  

BME UNITE organizing event held in tandem with BMES Annual Meeting, 2025.

Illustration comparing NIH racial funding disparity and equity with two cliffs. Left shows disparity: group think, applicants leaving, no diversity. Right shows equity: innovation, diverse reviewers, policies supporting diversity.

Stevens et al., Cell 2021

#Fundblackscientists

BME UNITE’s first major external work refocused attention on racial funding disparity at NIH by launching the #FundBlackScientists movement, as highlighted in our paper Fund Black Scientists published in Cell (2021). This paper has been viewed more than 15 million times. The NIH subsequently released a statement acknowledging the presence of systemic racism in biomedical research. NIH then established UNITE to identify ways to address structural racism.

To begin to address racial funding disparity, BME UNITE offered the Genentech Research Awards Program ($500,000 total), a program that disseminated pilot grant research funding to transiently overcome racial funding disparity and launching faculty to achieve numerous major federal funding awards for their scientific research programs.

BME Unite 2024 Future Faculty Fellows featuring 12 individuals from various universities and institutions, including Columbia, U Minnesota, UIUC, CHOP/UPenn, UT Austin, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Emory/GA Tech, WUSTL, NCI, Port Therapeutics, and Brown University. Includes seminar schedule details.

future faculty program

BME Unite is leading a seminar series designed to showcase current and future faculty candidates from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds in BME. Speakers will give 20-minute talks where they can showcase themselves and their work to BME department heads and current search committee members. Talks will be followed by an hour-long mentoring session between the speakers and BME department heads.

A group of women engaged in conversation indoors, wearing formal and business casual attire.

Program goals and history

Addressing systemic racism and Anti-Black racism in STEM academia: