Date/Time
Date(s) - 02/02/2016
1:00 pm
Biomodulatory Materials
ABSTRACT:
As the biomaterials community tackles grand challenges like intracellular drug delivery and complex tissue regeneration, strategies employing inert biomaterials serving a singular function are suboptimal. Instead novel, multi-dimensional strategies need to be developed in order to achieve the next series of breakthroughs in biomaterials-based research. One emerging strategy is the exploitation of the physicochemical properties of biomaterials to directly modulate cell and host responses giving rise to a new sub-class of biomaterials termed biomodulatory materials. In this seminar, research designing and utilizing biomodulatory materials for applications in regenerative engineering and immunoengineering will be discussed. Also, future opportunities to establish a SEC research consortium to address unmet clinical needs in veterinary and human medicine will be presented.
BIOGRAPHICAL:
Bret Ulery is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and the Principal Investigator of the Biomodulatory Materials Engineering Laboratory at the University of Missouri. After earning a B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering and a B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Iowa in 2006, he conducted graduate research with Dr. Balaji Narasimhan at Iowa State University and received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering with a Graduate Minor in Immunobiology in 2010. Following completion of his doctoral studies, he spent four years as a postdoctoral researcher first working in Dr. Cato Laurencin’s research group at the Institute for Regenerative Engineering at the University of Connecticut Health Center and then in Dr. Matt Tirrell’s group at the Institute for Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago.