The goal of the research is to build an interdisciplinary research and education program focused on predictive design of functional biomaterials with tunable characteristics, with a particular emphasis on bioadhesion.
The project will specifically develop a predictive approach for creating tunable bioadhesives, i.e. to synthesize a comprehensive library of structurally related polymer-based bioadhesives, to quantify the structure/function relationships that correlate to their kinetics of adhesion, strength of adhesion, and kinetics of dissociation, and to use these data to build a predictive model that will allow the tunable and a priori determination of a proposed structure's bioadhesive characteristics, hypothesizing that adhesion kinetics and dynamics are controlled by the material's total number and type of adhesive bonding sites, its total molecular weight, and its rate of degradation.
The proposed plan is to synthesize a comprehensive library of polymeric bioadhesives with serial variations in the total number of adhesive sites, molecular weight and rate of degradation, and characterize the adhesion dynamics for each bioadhesive, using the mucosa as a common substrate. The adhesion dynamics and kinetics will be related to bioadhesive parameters, e.g. the total number of adhesion sites, molecular weight, rate of degradation and the physicochemical characteristics of the bioadhesive and its interaction with the mucosa. Synthesize of comprehensive library of polymers, in the field of molecular engineering-base science, will be productive for the society.
This project will have a broad impact by developing practical guidelines for the molecular design of new biomaterials with a range of significant medical and non-medical applications. This project will offer the foundation upon which physical models will be developed to guide the design of new biomaterials. The research and educational plans promote interdisciplinary approaches for solving engineering problems. The PI plans to increase the number of women enter to science and engineering related fields through K-12 outreach activities.
