News.
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Dr James Armstrong is selected as UKRI Fellow
Congratulations to Stevens Group member Dr James Armstrong for being selected as a recipient of a prestigious UKRI Fellowship, which supports James’s goals of creating engineered tissue constructs and controlling cell behaviour using remote ultrasound stimuli. As a UKRI Fellow, James’s research activities are supported for 3 years from May 2018 – congrats, James!
Molly Stevens awarded PTN Medema Lecture Award
Molly Stevens has been awarded the Polymer Technology Netherlands Medema Lecture Award in 2018. This honour is awarded annually to a prolific polymer scientist selected by the Polymer Technology Netherlands, the National Dutch Graduate School of Polymer Science and Technology.
UKRMP “Smart Materials” Hub announced
Molly Stevens is Director of the recently awarded UK Regenerative Medicine Platform (UKRMP) "Acellular Materials / Smart Materials - 3D Architecture" Hub. This Smart Materials Hub involves 9 other UK-based Universities and aims towards materials-based approaches that support regenerative therapies. The Hub has been awarded £4 million from the UKRMP and is for 5 years.
Manuscript Featured in Advanced Materials
The Stevens Group has been featured on the Back Cover of the most recent issue of Advanced Materials. The report, entitled “Drug Delivery: Engineering Extracellular Vesicles with the Tools of Enzyme Prodrug Therapy”, was led by Dr Gregor Fuhrmann and Drs Rona Chandrawati, Paresh Parmar, Timothy Keane, Sergio Bertazzo and Ms Stephanie Maynard and describes how extracellular vesicles can be incorporated in hydrogels as an advanced enzyme-prodrug therapy.
Molly Stevens inducted into the AIMBE College of Fellows
Molly Stevens has been elected and inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows. AIMBE’s College of Fellows is comprised of around 1,500 individuals who have made significant contributions to the medical and biological engineering (MBE) community in academia, industry, government, and education.
Nayoung Kim wins 1st Poster Prize at this year’s Postgraduate Research Day
Congratulations to Stevens Group member Nayoung Kim who won 1st Prize for her poster entitled “Functionalised plasmonic nanoarray for multidimensional label-free surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy signatures in biological environments”, based on work from Stevens Group members Nayoung Kim, Michael Thomas, Mads Bergholt, Hyejeong Seong, Anika Nagelkerke and Isaac Pence, at this year’s Postgraduate Research Day held at Imperial College London. Congrats Nayoung and to the team!
James Armstrong wins Best Oral Presentation 2018 at ARUK Fellows Meeting
Congratulations to Stevens Group member James Armstrong for winning Best Oral Presentation at the Arthritis Research UK Fellows Meeting 2018 held in Loughborough, UK on 15-16 March 2018 for his talk entitled “Remote field engineering of musculoskeletal tissue constructs”. James delivered his talk on his Fellowship held in the Stevens programme, focusing on the use if externally applied fields to guide the cellular organisation during tissue engineering. Congrats James!
Molly Stevens is the 2018 recipient of the Marshall R. Urist Award
The Orthopaedic Research Society has selected Molly Stevens as the 2018 recipient of the Marshall R. Urist, MD Award in Excellence in Tissue Regeneration Research. The Urist Award honors investigators who have made significant contributions to research in tissue regeneration. The award citation reads that it is presented to Molly Stevens in recognition of her incredible advancements in using a multidisciplinary approach based on physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, medicine and the life sciences to design and develop bio-inspired materials for regenerative medicine.
Manuscript Featured on the Front Cover of ChemBioChem
The Stevens Group has been featured on the Front Cover of the most recent issue of ChemBioChem. The report, entitled “MicroRNA Detection by DNA-Mediated Liposome Fusion”, was led by Stevens group alumnus Dr Coline Jumeaux and also includes Stevens Group member Eunjung Kim and alumni Rona Chandrawati and Philip Howes, in collaboration with Prof Fredrik Höök and describes how liposome fusion can be mediated by DNA to selectively detect microRNA in low nanomolar concentrations.
Study on cell geometry directing stem cell signalling and fate published in Nature Materials
The Stevens Group’s latest Nature Materials article entitled "Cell-geometry-dependent changes in plasma membrane order direct stem cell signalling and fate" reports on how cell shape and geometry act as regulators for cell physiology and stem cell signalling. Stevens Group members Thomas von Erlach, Sergio Bertazzo, Christine-Maria Horejs, Stephanie Maynard, Hélène Autefage, Charalampos Kallepitis and Silvia Goldoni contributed with excellent studies along with strong collaborations from the del Río Hernández and Chen research labs. Well done!
Chia-Chen (Jane) Hsu Graduates with a PhD
Congratulations to Jane who has graduated from the Stevens Group with a PhD entitled “Biophysical regulations in neural development.”
Ultrasensitive point of care diagnostic test for HIV
The Stevens Group’s paper entitled “Platinum nanocatalyst amplification: Redefining the gold standard for lateral flow immunoassays with ultrabroad dynamic range” reports on an ultrasensitive diagnostic test that outperforms the gold standard point-of-care commercial kit for p24, a biomarker for HIV. This work involved members Colleen Loynachan, Michael Thomas, and Shweta Agarwal and is supported by the EPSRC IRC “i-sense” consortium and our collaborators within “i-sense”.
[Imperial news highlight] [i-sense news highlight]
Jenny Puetzer has been appointed as Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University
Congratulations to Jenny Puetzer who is now an Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in the States! She is starting her independent academic career following her postdoctoral research with us focusing on the design and characterization of biomimetic functionalized scaffolds for osteochondral and other engineered tissues. Congratulations Jenny!
Stevens Group member Luke Salter wins joint 1st presentation prize
Congratulations to PhD student Luke Salter, jointly supervised with Profs Martin Heeney and Natalie Stingelin, for winning joint 1st prize for his talk “Well defined supramolecular and covalent conductive polymers for cardiac tissue engineering” at the Plastic Electronics Winter School 2018 in Bergun, Switzerland from 22-26 January 2018. Congrats Luke!
Ultraspecific diagnostic test for Ebola virus
The Stevens Group’s paper “A serological point-of-care test for the detection of IgG antibodies against Ebola virus in human survivors” reports on an ultraspecific diagnostic test capable of distinguishing different strains of the Ebola virus in serum from survivors in Uganda. This work involved members Polina Brangel and Philip Howes and is supported by the EPSRC IRC “i-sense” consortium and our collaborators within “i-sense”.
[Imperial Ebola news highlight] [i-sense news highlight][C&EN news highlight]
Katie Hansel Graduates with PhD
Congratulations to Katie who has graduated from the Stevens Group with a PhD entitled “Microscopy of interactions at the cell-material and cell-matrix interface."
Kella Kapnisi Graduates with PhD
Congratulations to Kella who has graduated with a PhD entitled “Conductive biomaterials with an auxetic design for treating myocardial infarctions”.
Shweta Agarwal Graduates with PhD
Congratulations to Shweta who has graduated from the Stevens Group with a PhD entitled “Nanoscale characterisation of cardiovascular tissue calcification.”
Stevens Group member Arianna Ferrini wins Poster Prize
Congratulations to Stevens Group member Arianna Ferrini for winning the Best Poster Presentation Prize at the Future Investigators of Regenerative Medicine (FIRM) 2017 in Girona, Spain. Co-supervised by Prof Nadia Rosenthal, Arianna presented her work entitled “Evaluation of Cardiac Differentiation of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (hiPSCs) under Acidic pH”, co-authored by Limor Zwi-Dantsis, Nadia Rosenthal and Molly Stevens. Congrats Arianna!
Stevens Group members Conor Horgan and Jelle Penders win Prize from Nanomed Consortium
Congratulations to Stevens Group members Jelle Penders and Conor Horgan, who were voted Best Presentation at the Nanomed consortium, an H2020 ITN focusing on innovative nanomedicines (grant no. 676137). Congrats to Conor and Jelle!