Everything in our world is made from materials, meaning life is enabled by material development and efficiency. In today’s society, from constant technological revolution to the global pandemic, life as we know it is always evolving. But as the world around us evolves, the materials around us also need to evolve to keep up with current demands. But how? As a part of Duke University’s annual Research Week on Feb. 3, researchers from a multitude of practices offered their wisdom and research.
Moderated by Dr. Catherine L. Brinson, Ph.D., the panel hosted three Duke Scholars and their research on ‘Materials for a Changing World’. “The development of new materials can really be key in solving some of the more critical challenges of our time,” Brinson maintained.
The first scholar to present was R.J Reynolds distinguished professor of chemistry, Dr. David N Beratan, Ph.D. His research concerns the transition from soft, wet, and tiny research machines to more durable, long-term research machines in the science field. “The machines of biology tend to be stochastic and floppy rather than deterministic and hard,” Beratan began. “They’re messy and there are lots of moving parts. They’re intrinsically noisy and error-prone, etc…They’re very different from the kinds of things you see under the hood of your car, and we’d really like to understand how they work and what lessons we might derive from them for our world.” His complex research and research group have aided in bridging the gap in knowledge regarding the transition of biological functional machines to synthetic ones.
The panel continued with Aleksandar S. Vesic Distinguished Professor in mechanical engineering, Dr. Michael Rubinstein, Ph.D. His research involves the development of self-healing materials across multiple spectrums. “What you want to think about is materials that can heal themselves,” he stated. “If there’s a crack or a failure in a material, we would like the material to heal itself without external perturbation involvement. So it could be done by the other diffusion of molecules across some physical approaches, or by a chemical approach where you have bonds that were broken to the form.” His research on this possibility has made strides in the scientific field, especially in a time of such ecological stress and demand for materials.
The panel concluded with biomedical engineering professor Dr. Tatiana Segura, Ph.D. Segura talked about work they are doing at their lab regarding materials that can be used to heal the human body after damage or injury. She began by mentioning that “we are a materials lab and that’s what we’re interested in designing. So what are we inspired by? Well, we are really inspired by the ability of our body to heal.” At her lab, a primary motivation is healing disabilities after a stroke. “Sometimes you have something that you deal with for a long time no matter how your body healed. And that inspires us to consider how do we actually engage this process with materials to make it go better and actually make our body heal in a way that we can promote repair and regeneration.” Understanding this process is a complex one, she explained, but one that she believes is crucial in understanding the design of the material.
‘Materials for a Changing World’ was yet another extremely powerful speaker series offered this year during Duke Research Week. Our world is changing, and our materials need to keep up. With the help of these experts, material innovation has a bright future.
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