Fischell Institute Featured in Materials Research Society Video

Researchers from the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices and their collaborators were highlighted in a recent video put forth by the Materials Research Society. The video drives home the importance of research collaborations, such as the Materials Genome Initiative, developed in 2014 by a subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council.

In the video, University of Maryland Vice President of Research and Fischell Department of Bioengineering (BIOE) professor Laurie Locascio states, "A new paradigm in materials science is needed. One of the things that the Materials Genome Initiative set out to do was to shorten that time from discovery of basic materials to insertion into products."

Fischell Institute director William E. Bentley adds, "We're trying to put the Fischell Institute into a position where, [we're asking], 'What are the new things that could come out of science and technology - in particular, from our National Science Foundation-funded materials genome work - that would allow us to create new devices that aren't even imagined yet, today?'"

Along with Bentley, Fischell Institute faculty member Greg Payne (Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research) and Jinyang Li (BIOE Ph.D. student) discuss the importance of their efforts to advance redox-linked bioelectronics research.

"A lot of the 21st century examples of the challenges in materials science are really based on applications in medicine, or in the environment, or in agriculture," Payne said. "Those applications will require that we understand how biology builds things so that we can use their materials and their methods to create high-performance materials."

View the full video online.

Published February 15, 2019