Location:
Classroom 8, Hudson Beare Building
Date:
Biomaterials for Biofabrication
Ferry Melchels, Associate Professor Heriot-Watt University
Abstract
Recently, the advent of biofabrication technologies has brought many new opportunities in tissue engineering and drug discovery, and rekindled the hope of regenerating diseased tissues and organs. One of the major hurdles in this upsurge has been the development of biomaterials suitable for the various fabrication technologies and applications.
In this talk I will showcase some of our research on polymer biomaterials tailored to certain fabrication technologies and biomedical applications. These include shape memory polymers and tough polymer networks prepared by DLP stereolithography, hydrogels for bioprinting and 3D cell culture, suspension media for freeform 3D printing, and capsules for vaccine delivery.
Biography
Associate Professor in the Institute of Biological Chemistry, Biophysics & Bioengineering at Heriot-Watt University. He develops and studies polymeric biomaterials; combining hydrogels, scaffold materials and cells with biofabrication technologies to prepare 3D constructs for regenerative medicine, in vitro modelling and drug delivery. His work has been published in leading journals, attracting some 6,000 citations over the past 5 years. Ferry holds an MSc (2005) in chemical engineering and PhD (2010) in biomaterials from the University of Twente (The Netherlands). He was a Marie Curie post-doctoral fellow between two of the pioneering institutes in Biofabrication; Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia) and University Medical Center Utrecht (The Netherlands) before starting his PI position in Edinburgh in 2015. Besides home brewing the best beers on the weekend, his future aim is to continue advancing materials-based technology platforms for biomedical applications.
Pizza will be available from 12.30pm in Eng Inn.
