Archive | July 2024

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New paper on material processing of bacterial polymers

Our latest paper “Engineering bacterial biomanufacturing: characterization and manipulation of Sphingomonas sp. LM7 extracellular polymers” is now published in RSC Soft Matter. This study was spearheaded by Ellen van Wijngaarden in collaboration with Prof. David Hershey’s lab at Wisconsin-Madison. We identified the material properties of a novel polysaccharide, Promonan, and demonstrated improved thermal stability and […]

Hongyi Cai’s collaborative paper on tailoring Biomimetic Cationic Polyelectrolytes now published in Angewandte Chemie

MMD lab’s emerging collaboration with Prof Ben McDonald of Brown University’s Chemistry Department has its first publication! PhD candidate Hongyi Cai lent his expertise in mechanical testing of polyelectrolyte elastomers and gels to help enable “Ion-Specific Interactions Engender Dynamic and Tailorable Properties in Biomimetic Cationic Polyelectrolytes.”

Outreach and Orienteering

This past Thursday and Friday the MMD lab, led by PhD student Max Tepermeister, hosted a 4-H University U program for middle and high school students on Mechanics of Materials, highlighting cool features of meta-materials. Si, Jeff, Ellen, and Zhongtong all helped out! Then on Saturday we went on our first ever lab orienteering adventure, […]