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BioInspired Syracuse supports research into complex biological systems, developing and designing programmable smart materials to address global challenges in health, medicine and materials innovation. It is an Institute for Material and Living Systems, focusing on three key areas: smart materials, form and function, and development and disease. BioInspired involves faculty from life sciences, engineering, physics, and chemistry.

News & Headlines

Combining Cell Biology and Bioengineering, Researchers Work to Create “Mini Kidney” for Accurate Testing

November 16, 2023

Upstate Researcher Mira Krendel, PhD, working with Syracuse University Professor Pranav Soman, PhD, will be using almost $500,000 from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) over the next two years to create a 3-D printed miniature model of the kidney system. This project could lead to better treatments for kidney-related…

SUNY TAF Class of 2022 – Juntao Luo, Upstate Medical University

November 7, 2023

SUNY TAF Class of 2022 – Juntao Luo, Upstate Medical University – YouTube For Juntao Luo, finding a cure for severe sepsis is personal. The SUNY Upstate Medical University associate professor of pharmacology recalls that his brother spent several months in intensive care after contracting an infection that stimulated an extreme and life-threatening immune response…

A&S Physicist Awarded Two NIH R01 Grants for Cutting-Edge Biosensor Design Work

November 1, 2023

Professor Liviu Movileanu and his team are developing generalizable nano-sized sensors which could one day help detect biomarkers for various diseases. …

Events

Morphogenesis and Shear Flow Dynamics of Copolymer Vesicles with Dr. Radhakrishna Sureshkumar

December 8, 2023 at 11:00 am – 12:00 pm

Physics Building

Understanding the morphogenesis of tubular, lamellar and vesicular assemblies of amphiphilic copolymers in aqueous solutions is of fundamental and practical interest. For instance, functionalized copolymer vesicles have been successfully employed in medical diagnostics, therapeutics and chemical synthesis. Molecular dynamics simulations are employed to probe the thermodynamic motifs underlying the evolution of vesicular morphologies in initially homogeneous solutions of diblock and triblock copolymers. Size, shape, aggregation number, body curvature, surface area of the polymer-solvent interface and configurational entropy of the intermediate structures are tracked along the vesiculation pathway. For diblocks, two mechanisms of vesicle formation are observed. One of these mechanisms is facilitated by the following pathway: formation of spherical micelles and their merger to form rodlike micelles, flattening of such cylindrical structures to form rectangular lamellae (flat bilayers) which further reorganize into disk-shaped lamellae, and bending/curving of disks into cavities which close to form vesicles. Changes in information entropy, quantified by the expectation of the logarithm of the probability distribution function of segmental stretch, are statistically insignificant along the transition pathway. The process is facilitated by a partial exchange between the energies associated with hydrophobic interactions and curvature. In another mechanism, vesicle formation is enabled by solvent diffusion into spherical micelles, through an ostensibly activated process. Selection of the vesiculation mechanism depends on polymer concentration and chain flexibility. In triblock solutions, self-assembly of hairpin-shaped copolymers leads first to the formation of spherical aggregates that further organize into polygonal topologies with perforated sides. Such polyhedral shapes reorganize at nearly constant aggregation number to form unilamellar vesicles. The surface area of the polymer-solvent interface is seen to decrease exponentially with time during the vesiculation process. The influence of mechanical forces caused by shear flow deformation on equilibrium morphologies will also be discussed in the presentation.

Smart Materials Meeting Faculty

December 13, 2023 at 3:00 pm – 4:30 pm

Bowne Hall

Please join the Smart Materials Focus Group for a meeting of group business along with some snacks and refreshments for your enjoyment. We look forward to seeing you there!

Scientific Animation with Python

January 11, 2024 at 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Bowne Hall

Dr. Phil Nelson, University of Pennsylvania, is leading this workshop on making engaging animations with Python, the coding language. It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but an animation can be better still, because it represents time as time, not as distance along some axis. Suddenly the process you wish to show becomes a story with a plot. We have all resorted to grabbing an animation from Wikipedia, but the best ones are those that you make for yourself. I’ll help you teach yourself how (and why) to animate various kinds of charts, heatmaps, and so on, and how to save them in forms that can be embedded into your future presentations. You’ll need to arrive with a laptop running Python, preferably the free distribution available from Anaconda.com . Equally good, Google Colaboratory can also do what we want. For an excellent resource on getting started with using Python for modeling, please see Dr. Nelson’s entry-level textbook, available as an e-book here. There are also highly-rated courses on LinkedIn Learning, available to members of the university community. Please register here.

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