Designer materials for biomedical engineering
Our expectations to wellbeing and healthcare is ever increasing and is constantly challenged in a socioeconomic context. This puts a continuous demand on new or smarter materials used in health and medical applications. Although new materials are constantly developed, “re-engineering” of existing materials is an attractive solution as the approval process is faster. In this talk I will discuss how modern engineering methods can be applied to; firstly understand the biological requirements for a given biomedical application, and secondly how we can specifically engineer materials to meet those needs. Our approach has been the use of nanoscale engineering to elicit the required biological responses. In our work, these length scales are reached using semiconductor techniques such as electron beam lithography and reactive ion etching. The advantage behind this approach is the ability to specifically design at a length scale comparable to the building blocks of life: cells and proteins. During the past decade, we have developed a range of tools to 1) provide flexible lithography, 2) supporting tools for biological experiments, 3) means of upscaling for large areas and large part numbers and 4) computational methods for analysis and modelling. Each of these areas will be discussed in this presentation and summarised with an outlook towards the future.
Biography Nikolaj Gadegaard
Nikolaj Gadegaard is professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of Research in the School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow. With an educational background in Chemistry, Physics and Biophysics, and having worked at the interface of physics/engineering and biology for more than two decades. He is an expert on the use of micro- and nanofabrication technologies for biomedical applications with a particular focus in using injection moulding for sample preparation. He has published more than 150 papers in e.g. Nature family journals, Advanced Materials, ACS nano and JACS with more than 11.000 citations and an h-index for 47. In 2015 he was awarded an ERC consolidator grant (FAKIR) to study the cellular dynamics of cells on nanostructured materials. This work combines precision engineering with state-of-the-art super resolution microscopy and FRET imaging for spatial mapping and mechanotransduction events, respectively.
Day: Wednesday December 11th
Where: Health & Life science
Time: 10:20h – 10:50h
