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Dr Marc in het Panhuis (left) and PhD student Cameron Ferris who will... |
UOW research to feature on ABC-TV’s The New Inventors program
Dr Marc in het Panhuis and PhD student Cameron Ferris will appear on the prime time national ABC 1 TV program, “The New Inventors”, at 8pm on Wednesday 23 September.
The two scientists will show how their invention is a way of mimicking soft tissues using gellan gum, a food additive that’s commonly used in food products such as yoghurts.
They will demonstrate that it can be moulded into any particular shape and that it can be made to conduct electricity.
The researchers will point out that the advantage of gellan gum is that it is biodegradable and similar to the materials which make up human beings.
“This means our material has the potential to be used to provide the necessary cues to simulate the growth of healthy cells. We hope our invention is a step towards shortening the queues of people waiting for organ transplants the world over,” Dr in het Panhuis and Mr Ferris, said.
Cameron graduated with a UOW 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. He now works within UOW’s Intelligent Polymer Research Institute.
Dr Marc in het Panhuis was recently awarded an ARC Future Fellowship (http://media.uow.edu.au/news/UOW065832.html) and is the head of the Soft Materials Group at UOW. He is also the Nanotechnology Degree Co-ordinator and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science at the Innovation Campus. He is supervising Cameron’s research.
The invention is based on the researchers’ recently published work in two articles in the prestigious international journal Soft Matter - the top journal in fundamental soft matter research.
Their research was also selected as the inside cover of Soft Matter and featured in Highlights in Chemical Biology, a Royal Society of Chemistry news service that provides an overview of the latest developments in chemical biology.