Biomaterials Discovery Workshop 2020

January saw the return of the popular Biomaterials Discovery Workshop for it's fourth year. The event was held at the University of Nottingham Jubilee Conference Centre, and attended by delegates from across the UK as well as delegates from Thailand, The Netherlands and Central America.

This was the first year the event opened up to include oral presentation submissions from delegates, providing opportunities to early stage career researchers to present their work to global leaders in the field.

Invited speakers spoke on a wide variety of topics from "Innovation in Orthopaedic Tissue Repair" (Prof. Sarah Cartmel, University of Manchester), to "Mechanisms of Biofilm-Associated Antimicrobial Tolerance" (Prof. Tim Tolker-Nielsen, University of Copenhagen). The speakers came from near and far, including Prof. Omid Veiseh from Rice University in Texas with his talk "Immune Modulatory Biomaterials for Cell-Based Therapies", as well as our own Prof. Alvaro Mata from the University of Nottingham speaking on "Turning Molecules Into Functional Biomaterials Through Supramolecular Engineering" and collaborator Prof. Patricia Dankers (Eindhoven Technical University) who spoke on "Supramolecular polymeric materials as synthetic extracellular matrices: from design to high throughput screening".

 The key note speaker was Prof. Jennifer Elisseeff from Johns Hopkins University, with her talk "The Immunology System in Tissue Repair and Biomaterial Response". Prof. Elisseeff discussed the process of human recovery from tissue damage and how resulting scars can lead to chronic conditions such as fibrosis. Her work focusses on the human immune profiles that are associated with dysfunctional tissue repair, and how novel biomaterials that are being developed can be utilised in therapeutics and treatments for improved tissue regeneration.

In response to feedback, the 2020 workshop also demonstrated a greater industry presence in response to participant feedback, with exhibits from industry sponsors, as well as a lecture from Ann Kramer, the CEO of UK based Electrospinning Company in Oxfordshire, on "Translating Electrospinning Biomaterials Research into a Medical Device"

The Royal Society of Chemistry Biomaterial Discovery Poster Prize was won by Dr Alessandro Carabelli from the University of Nottingham, with second place taken by Nazia Mehrban from UCL.

A full programme of the day's events can be found here, along with further information about the event. For any other queries, email  BiomaterialDiscovery@nottingham.ac.uk.