Dr Aaron Ohta received a grant from the National Science Foundation's Broadening Participation Research Initiation Grants in Engineering (BRIGE) Program. Dr Ohta will receive $174,635 over two years with the funding directed to broadening participation of underrepresented groups in engineering. Dr Ohta will be focusing on increasing the representation of Native Hawaiian and Women in engineering. Dr Ohta's research grant is titled "BRIGE: Minority Education and Research in Biomedical Microdevices – An Optically Controlled Cell Culturing and Harvesting Platform". This research will be focused on developing "smart" cell culture dishes that allow biologists to accurately and precisely control the growth of cells, which will help in the development of the cell based therapies for a variety of diseases, and also help with fundamental understanding of how cells behave.