Keynote speakers

Marcy Zenobi-Wong is a Full Professor of Tissue Engineering and Biofabrication at ETH Zürich in Switzerland.  She is a Mechanical Engineer by training, and received her Bachelor degree from MIT, and Master/PhD from Stanford University.   She leads a multidisciplinary team with strong focus on biofabrication technologies including light-based bioprinting and on the development of advanced biomaterials for tissue regeneration.   She has held leadership roles in the International Society for Biofabrication, Swiss Society for Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine (SSB+RM), and the Institute for Biomechanics, ETH Zürich.  She currently serves on the editorial board of Advanced Healthcare Materials and on the Executive Editorial Board of Biofabrication. 

Presentation title: Architected !  How void spaces in scaffolds promote tissue regeneration

Since 2006, Claude Oelschlaeger is Senior Scientist at the Institute of Mechanical Process Engineering and Mechanics at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He obtained his PhD in Physics from the University of Strasbourg (France) in 2003 based on rheology and light scattering of surfactant solutions. After his dissertation, he joined the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz (Germany) as a postdoc working on method development and non-linear rheology of block copolymers. He is currently responsible at KIT for the group’s research activities in the area micro- and macro-rheology of surfactant and biopolymer solutions, networks, and gels, as well as 3D bioprinting of bioinks.

Presentation title: Microheterogeneities Everywhere – a Microrheological Approach for Visualization and Characterization

Professor Ruth Cameron FREng is joint Head of the Department of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge, and a Director of the Cambridge Centre for Medical Materials.  She is also a fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Her work has impacted the fields of medical materials, pharmaceutical engineering, and polymer engineering.  These achievements have been recognized widely through fellowships, medals and prizes from learned societies. 

Presentation title: Engineered biomacromolecular environments for cells

Jonathan Massera is a professor of Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering (2021) at Tampere University. He received his PhD from Clemson University (SC, USA) and then performed a post-doc at Åbo Akademi where he received the post-doctoral fellowship from Research Council of Finland. He then started his tenure at Tampere University of Technology where he received the Academy Research Fellow (Research Council of Finland).

Jonathan Massera heads the Bioceramics, Bioglasses and Biocomposites groups and he is the head of the international MSc programme in Biomedical Sciences and Engineering. His research focus on hard and soft tissue regeneration using bioceramics, but especially bioactive glasses. The research group develop new bioactive glass composition and new composites/hybrids biomaterial, for tissue regeneration, as well as study the cell/materials, bacteria/materials and proteins/materials interaction. Lately, part of the research has been centered in merging photonic and biomaterials into biophotonic bone graft able to not only regenerate hard tissue but also to release, on-demand, photocleavable drugs using light stimuli.

Presentation title: Biophotonic biomaterials: a Perspective for controlled drug, spatial-temporal, release

Claas Willem Visser’s lab develops multi-scale functional materials, by converting fluid droplets or bubbles into solid “building blocks” and directly printing these into functional materials. The multi-scale nature of these materials enables optimizing their mechanical, acoustic, electrical, and biological properties for various applications. This lab started in 2018, and is based in the Thermal and Fluid Engineering department within the University of Twente.

From 2016 to 2018, Visser worked as a Rubicon Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Here, he developed Direct Bubble Writing as a new method for additive manufacturing of polymer foams in the lab of Prof. Jennifer A. Lewis. Before that, as a post-doc at the University of Twente, Visser co-developed a new technology for particle fabrication and 3D printing named “In-air microfluidics“. Visser pursued his Ph.D. (2011-2015) in the Physics of Fluids group at the University of Twente, under the supervision of Prof. Chao Sun (now at Tsinghua University) and Prof. Detlef Lohse. Here, he contributed to fundamental studies on micro-scale droplet impact as well as applications such as laser-induced transfer of metals and droplet-based cell deposition.

From 2006 to 2011, Visser worked at Tata Steel Research, Development, and Technology as a researcher and project leader. Visser received his MSc degree in Applied Physics from the University of Twente in 2006, during which completed his internship in Prof. Ke-Qing Xia’s group at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Visser is co-founder and CSO of spin-off companies IamFluidics and FoamPrint3D, which respectively commercialize the In-Air Microfluidics technology and Direct Bubble Writing of polymer foams. Visser is board member of the J.M. Burgers Center, the National School for Fluid Mechanics in The Netherlands.

Presentation title: Fabricating functional multi-scale materials via in-air microfluidics