Micro-/Nanoengineering of Bio-Based Colloids for Environmental and Healthcare Applications

Soaring population growth, supply and demand imbalance, shortage of ready-to-use remedies, and urbanization have imposed unprecedented challenges to satisfying the world’s essential needs. At the Bio-Soft Materials Laboratory (B-SMaL), we try to address some of the quintessential challenges of the 21st century in healthcare and environment by developing translatable colloidal systems based on the chemically-enabled micro- and nanoengineering of abundant biopolymers. In this talk, I will first explain how the most abundant biopolymer in the world, cellulose, is chemically converted to a newly emerged colloid, called hairy cellulose nanocrystals (HCNC) with fundamentally different colloidal properties compared with conventional cellulose nanocrystals (CNC). I will show how such differences have enabled the applications of HCNC in sustainable development, ranging from rare-earth element recovery to body fluid treatment for preventing antimicrobial resistance. I will then discuss how emulsifying gelatin (a derivative of the most abundant protein in the body, collagen) yields an in situ forming, bio-orthogonal porous hydrogel platform with orthogonal stiffness and porosity that is nontrivial to create using bulk hydrogels. Colloidal engineering of this class of microfluidic-enabled modular hydrogels has enabled accelerated tissue repair and 3D bioprinting of tissue models. Together, these platforms show the power of bio-based colloids to leverage eminent, cost-effective technologies for improving the quality of modern life.

Additional Information:

Dr. Amir Sheikhi has mentored 120+ trainees (undergraduates, graduate, and postdocs) since his arrival at Penn State in 2019. He is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering/Chemistry/Neurosurgery (by courtesy). In August 2019, he founded the Bio-Soft Materials Laboratory (B-SMaL) to tackle some of the challenges of the 21st century in biomedicine and the environment by designing novel bio-based colloidal systems via micro- and nanoengineering techniques. Amir’s lab consists of 8 graduate students, 2 postdocs, and more than 30 undergraduate researchers, funded by NIH, ACS, The REMADE Institute (DOE), Meghan Rose Bradley Foundation, Center for Lignocellulose Structure and Formation (CLSF), Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment (IEE), Benkovic Research Initiative, etc. Amir’s research has been featured in more than 80 publications, 70 seminars, and 23 patent applications with recognition by over 50 news media outlets. He is the recipient of several major awards, including the AIChE’s 35 Under 35, ACS PMSE Early Investigator, ACS Unilever Award for Outstanding Young Investigator in Colloid & Surfactant Science, The John C. Chen Young Professional Leadership Scholarship, and The UNIFOR Global Research Fellowship. Recently, Amir was named as one of the 9 emerging leaders in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering worldwide, featured on the cover of the Inaugural “Futures” Issue of Bioengineering & Translational Medicine journal. Amir earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at McGill University and continued to complete two years of post-doctoral research on colloids and macromolecules at McGill Chemistry. Before joining Penn State, he was a postdoctoral fellow in Bioengineering at Harvard Medical School and UCLA, working with Ali Khademhosseini. Amir is an Associate Editor of Bioengineering & Translational Medicine journal and Chemical Engineering Journal and serves as an editorial board member of Biomaterials and Bioactive Materials.