Fiorenzo G. Omenetto - Living materials – manipulating light with forms of the past?

Virtual Lecture

Abstract:

Natural materials offer new avenues for innovation across fields, bringing together, like never before, natural sciences and high technology.
Significant opportunity exists in reinventing naturally-derived materials, such as structural proteins, and applying advanced material processing, prototyping, and manufacturing techniques to these ubiquitously present substances. This approach helps us imagine and realize sustainable, carbon-neutral strategies that operate seamlessly at the interface between the biological and the technological worlds.

Some of these opportunities include biomaterials-based applications in edible and implantable electronics, food preservation, energy harvesting, wearable sensors, compostable technology, distributed environmental sensing, medical devices and therapeutics, biospecimen stabilization, advanced medical diagnostics, and will be outlined in this talk, with a specific focus on the exciting intersection between photonics and proteins and its potential research domains.

Biography:
Fiorenzo G. Omenetto is the Frank C. Doble Professor of Engineering, and a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University. He also holds appointments in the Department of Physics and the Department of Electrical Engineering.
His research interests are in the convergence of technology, biologically inspired materials, and the natural sciences with an emphasis on new, transformative approaches for sustainable materials for high-technology applications and solutions for global health and sustainability.
He has proposed and pioneered the use of silk as a material platform for advanced technology with uses in photonics, optoelectronics, and nanotechnology applications, is co-inventor on several disclosures on the subject. His technologies are licensed by major corporations and he has co-founded multiple companies.

Prof. Omenetto was formerly a J. Robert Oppenheimer Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratories, a Guggenheim Fellow, and is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, the National Academy of Inventors, and of the American Physical Society and a recipient of the a Tällberg global leadership prize. His research has been featured extensively in the press with coverage in the most important media outlets worldwide.