A research team led by Waterloo Engineering students, including several undergraduates, has created a tissue-like hydrogel material for potential use for artificial muscles in robotics.
Hydrogels are soft, biocompatible materials with great promise for developing microrobots to perform non-invasive biomedical tasks within the human body, including the gastrointestinal and reproductive tracts.
Negin Bouzari, a PhD candidate in chemical engineering, headed the project after she spotted an untapped opportunity while reading an academic review paper.
“I felt the idea was hidden between the lines of the introduction to that paper,” she said. “One sentence grabbed my attention. I realized that although this had been a research topic for many years, it had never been applied to the material system that we are working with.”
Her supervisor, Dr. Hamad Shahsavan, later hired chemistry student Melanie Bouzanne, Micahel Ali and Edward Hong of nanotechnology engineering, and Nrushanth Suthaharan of biomedical engineering to help her.
“I want to encourage the undergraduate students that I teach to do research in my lab and to empower my graduate students to be research leaders,” said Shahsavan, a chemical engineering professor.
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