The Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS) will partner with the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech in 2013 by hosting its annual North American Conference in Atlanta.

Two members of the Petit Institute’s faculty have been designated to head the 2013 TERMIS conference. The conference chair will be Robert E. Guldberg, Ph.D., the director of the Petit Institute and professor in mechanical engineering and the program chair will be Todd McDevitt, PhD, associate professor in biomedical engineering and the director of the Stem Cell Engineering Center at Georgia Tech.

“We are honored to be selected and look forward to putting on a great meeting,” Guldberg said. TERMIS brings together an international community to promote discussion of the scientific challenges and therapeutic benefits for the development and application of the tissue engineering and regenerative medicine fields. TERMIS’ mission is to promote worldwide science and technology advancement and education in these fields. It does so through regular worldwide conferences, publishing the Tissue Engineering journal that it endorses and providing quarterly newsletters and other communications for its members.

“Bob and I are dedicated to creating a dynamic program that will honor the meetings of the past as well as introduce some new elements,” McDevitt remarked. TERMIS has been evolving over the last decade. Its roots began in 2001 as an annual workshop called “Tissue Growth Engineering” that was organized by the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative. In 2004, this small workshop evolved into the larger, national meeting called Regenerate. In 2006, the Regenerate World Congress was held in Pittsburgh where the meeting had grown significantly and had a large international following. By the following year, the society was rebranded into TERMIS to encompass its international presence. The society has continued to grow and now has chapters in Europe and Asia. TERMIS is open to anyone engaged in research in the tissue engineering or regenerative medicine arenas.

The 2011 TERMIS North American conference was held in Houston, Texas and in 2012 the entire society will come together for the TERMIS World Congress in Vienna, Austria.