Soft Matter Seminar: Prof. Pranav Soman

Research interests: Tissue engineering, Optical printing, Bioprinting, Microfluidics

Abstract: Nature’s marvelous ability to arrange few materials (proteins, sugars, minerals) across scales has realized a wide range of ‘smart’ multifunctional structures optimized to satisfy specific environmental demands. Man-made manufacturing, however, is not able to match Nature’s building capabilities. My group focuses on closing this gap between nature-made and man-made structures by developing new multiscale, multi-material, and multimodal optics-based printers and processing technologies for applications in microfluidics, organ-on-chip, photonics, durable hydrogels, bioprinting, and single cell applications. I strongly believe that a mutually reinforcing positive feedback between ‘technology’, ‘applications’ and ‘scientific discovery’ is essential to drive bioscience forward. In this seminar, I will present some methods developed in my group to shape soft hydrogels into smart multifunctional structures and devices. For more information please visit – https://psoman.expressions.syr.edu/ .