报告题目：Protein-Based Composite Biomaterials

报  告 人：Xiao Hu  Assistant Professor

Department of Physics and Astronomy

Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences

Rowan University

报告时间：5月27日下午 15:00-16:00

报告地点：闵行校区生物药学楼3-405会议室

联  系 人：夏小霞  021-34207254

 

Abstract:

Proteins are important biological macromolecules that have been used as materials for centuries, not only because they are environmentally friendly, renewable, and non-toxic, but also due to their excellent strength, elongation, toughness, slow degradability and great biocompatibility.  Combining proteins with other polymers can generate novel blend materials with diverse properties, such as suitable mechanical and chemical properties, favorable electrical and optical features or other excellent characteristics.  In this talk, we will use several protein based composite materials (e.g. silk-zein composites, silk-wild silk composites, silk-poly(lactic acid), silk-graphene composites) as examples to demonstrate our recent studies on this topic. By identifying molecular interactions between two polymers, we are able to create new composite materials with controllable thermal stability and mechanical resiliency. These composite materials were then fabricated into films, fibers, sponges, gels, and particles, as well as thermal, optical and electrical devices. Such material systems also provide advantages in comparison to traditional polymers due to the materials biodegradability, biocompatibility, and tenability in the body, and can be widely used in many biomedical fields such as biosensors, nano medicine, tissue regeneration and drug delivery.

 

Biography:

Dr. Xiao Hu is an Assistant Professor in Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rowan University, New Jersey, USA, with a joint appointment in Department of Biomedical and Translational Sciences, and a secondary appointment in Cooper Medical School of Rowan University. He received his Bachelor of Science in Material Physics at Nanjing University, China in 2003, and a Master of Science in Physics at Tufts University in 2005. Then he received a Master of Science in Biomedical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Physics at Tufts in 2009, focused on the study of long chain protein biomaterials such as silk fibroin. As an Assistant Professor in Rowan University, his teaching and research focus on the interdisciplinary area between biophysics, material science and biomedical engineering. Prior to Rowan, he was a Research Associate in the NIH P41 Tissue Engineering Resource Center and the Biomedical Engineering Department at Tufts University. Dr. Hu has more than 60 publications since 2006. His work has been published in Nature Communications, PNAS, Biomaterials, Macromolecules, Biomacromolecules, and PLoS ONE etc. And he has given over 60 invited talks and conference presentations internationally, with several best presentation awards. He also severed as reviewer for 15+ renowned journals, including Nature Communications, Macromolecules, Biomacromolecules, The Journal of Physical Chemistry, and Applied Physics Letters etc, with a "Outstanding Reviewer Award" received from the journal Polymer in 2014.