Welcome to the Bioinspired Materials Lab
We are building innovative biomaterials to address significant challenges in biology and medicine.
Chemists, biologists, materials scientists, and engineers collaborate to create new materials we refer to as “bioinspired materials”. Our materials are “bioinspired” because they mimic some of the fascinating ways that nature builds materials – from sea shells to human organs.
We work closely with biologists to make fundamental scientific discoveries. We also partner with clinicians to create medical devices that can regenerate diseased or damaged tissues.
Our goal is to achieve high impact by pursuing groundbreaking discoveries, translating discoveries into new medical treatments, and training the next generation of leaders in regenerative medicine.
Highlights
April 2023
Our lab attended the 2023 annual Society for Biomaterials meeting in San Diego, CA.
Joydeb Majumder; post-doc, presented his research; Engineering human induced pluripotent stem cell derived neural
tissue constructs for modeling neuroinflammation and neurotoxicity.
Hannah Martin Brinkman; graduate student, presented her research; Mineral coated iron oxide microparticles promote M1 macrophage polarization.
Margot Amitrano; graduate student, presented her research; High-throughput screening identifies hydrogel conditions for cardiomyocytes differentiation and maturation.
Josh Choe; graduate student, presented his research; Optimized minerals for stabilization and delivery of therapeutic mRNA.
Apoorva Ramamurthy; graduate student, presented her research; Induced pluripotent stem-cell derived synthetic neural constructs for brain cancer modelling.
January 2023
Chanul Kim; senior UW Biomedical Engineering student, attended the National Collegiate Research Conference at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. At the conference he presented a poster with his research focus titled:
- Characterization of decellularized plant leaf biomaterials for tissue engineering
Lab Spotlight
October 2023
Congratulations to Dr. Hannah Brinkman (Martin)! She has passed the defense of her thesis titled; “Combining Biomaterials and Immunotherapeutic mRNA to combat cancer”.
July 2023
Congratulations to Gianluca Fontana, who will be starting his new position as Scientist, at the Department of Surgery and Pediatrics, at the University of Verona in Italy.
March 2023
The Murphy Lab has a new graduate student; James Rolland. Welcome James!