Professor Christopher Li and Professor and Department Head Michele Marcolongo have received a National Science Foundation grant for their project entitled "Biomimetic Mineralization by Combining Block Copolymer Self-Assembly and One Dimensional Crystal Nucleation." The budget for this three-year project is $449,999.
Li and Marcolongo's proposed research aims to use a “bottom-up” directed assembly method to mimic the natural bone structure, and to understand the origin of the fantastic properties of natural bone. Bone is the second most commonly transplanted tissue; over 2.2 million bone graft procedures are performed annually worldwide. The knowledge gained from this study will not only help develop new generation bone mimics for tissue engineering, it will also shed light on novel hybrid materials design towards stronger and lighter nanocomposites
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