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Supervisor Dr Marc in het Panhuis with PhD student Cameron Ferris. Th... |
Undergrad student research published in top journal
Undergraduate students don’t usually have their research recognised in major journals, but for 22-year-old Cameron Ferris this achievement is another one of many that he has reached during his time at UOW.
Cameron, who is now studying a PhD at the Intelligent Polymer Research Institute, has co-authored two papers from research done during his undergraduate degree. The articles have been published in the prestigious international journal Soft Matter - the top journal in fundamental soft matter research.
Cameron graduated from a degree in Nanotechnology last year and received the highest UOW award – the Chancellor Robert Hope Memorial prize - as well as the University Medal for Science because of his exceptional academic performance in 2008.
Dr Marc in het Panhuis - head of the Soft Materials Group at UOW, and chief investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science at the Innovation Campus - supervised Cameron’s research and is the lead author of the two papers.
He described Cameron as ‘truly exceptional’ and said that having the two articles published shows the strength of UOW’s undergraduate research.
“The research published is solely his work, which is very rare for an undergraduate student,” Dr in het Panhuis said.
In the papers published in Soft Matter, Cameron and Dr in het Panhuis showed that ‘hydrogels’ (like jelly) made from the commonly used food additive gellan gum and containing carbon nanotubes, have potential to be used as a scaffold for tissue growth.
The researchers said that the study published has implications for spinal cord repair and growth of artificial organs. Also, because the matter has the ability to conduct electricity it could be used in bionic applications, and could help with drug delivery.
Cameron said that he knew when he was working on the research that it was an important field, but didn’t know that would be published.
“I knew that the research was cutting-edge, but I didn’t know both pieces would get published,” he said.
Cameron is now working towards a PhD in Chemistry under the supervision of Dr in het Panhuis and Professor Gordon Wallace. He is conducting research into how tissues and bio-materials can be ‘printed’ using inkjet printers.