The Emergence of Tissue Engineering as a Research Field

About the Authors

Bhavya Lal. An engineer by training, Ms. Lal has applied her analytic problem-solving skills to social science projects for the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Standards and Technology (in particular, the Advanced Technology Program), and other Federal Agencies for the last nine years. In these projects, she has led and herself designed and implemented case studies, literature reviews, surveys, and other qualitative data collection activities. In addition, she has analyzed and interpreted data, performed statistical analyses, written reports, and presented results at national and international conferences and workshops. Many of her NSF projects have required understanding historical underpinnings of NSF funded programs. Bhavya Lal is currently the Director of Abt Associates' Center for Science and Technology Policy Studies. Ms. Lal has a bachelor's and a master's degree in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), as well as a master's degree from the Technology and Policy Program (TPP) at MIT.

Jessica Viola. Ms. Viola has been a science and technology policy analyst at Abt Associates for the past 5 years. She has been most closely involved with NSF's Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) related activities and has participated in several process- and performance-based outcome measurement studies. She has experience in the design of data collection instruments and the analysis of that data for evaluative purposes. She has also participated in several qualitative and case-study based program evaluations involving expert interviews and focus groups. Ms. Viola also possess strong research and quantitative skills in both theoretical and laboratory science with a specialization in the chemical and biological sciences. Her undergraduate work involved independent laboratory research on cellular interactions at Harvard Medical School in their Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology. Ms. Viola has an undergraduate degree from Harvard University in biochemical sciences.

Dr. Diana Hicks, Ph.D. Dr. Hicks is a senior policy analyst at CHI Research, Inc. She is a student of science and technology policy by training and works in this area. Her career has focused on the scientific side, with a particular focus on using quantitative bibliometric tools to address policy and sociological questions of broad interest at the intersection of science and technology. At CHI she has used bibliometric and cyberbibliometric techniques to assess research institutes and programs for the Department of Energy, National Science Foundation and the American Cancer Society. She has recently spoken at the American Association for Advancement of Science workshop on Science Policy and at the first Gordon Research Conference on Science Policy and at a joint OECD/German government workshop on science-industry relations. She received her MSc and PhD from the University of Sussex in science and technology policy studies.

Dr. Oren Grad, Ph.D., MD. Oren Grad is experienced in a full range of data collection and analytic techniques including historical reviews and policy analyses, case studies, interviews, focus groups, surveys, statistical analyses of quantitative data, and bibliometric analyses, and has focused especially on program outcomes which are primarily qualitative in nature and difficult to measure. Dr. Grad has played a key role in developing conceptual frameworks for evaluation design and data analysis on several major evaluations of NSF Programs, including the Coordinated Experimental Research in Computer Science (CER) Program, the Engineering Research Centers (ERC) Program, and the Science and Technology Centers (STC) Program, all of which have been concerned with the dynamics of emerging fields and the role of NSF in their support. Dr. Grad's has a great breadth of interdisciplinary technical knowledge across the biological and physical sciences and clinical medicine, he has an MD and a Ph.D. in health policy and management from the Harvard/MIT Division of Health Science and Technology (HST), as well as extensive experience in writing historical analyses which interpret research programs in light of political and institutional perspectives.

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