There have been many changes - great successes and new faces! Sawsan (PhD and postdoc) took a position with Intel Ireland. Hossam and Emrullah graduated with their PhD and now work for Nikon and Abbott Laboratories, respectively. Fengyuan took a postdoc position with Prof. Jiangyu Li. Longtime group member Jason joined Coca Cola as a data scientist. Srikanth went to TCD for a postdoc and then to Analog Devices on an SFI Industry RD&I Fellowship. Two year CSC PhD student Qiancheng graduated and returned as a postdoc. Alyona joined as a co-supervised PhD student and recently secured an IRC fellowship. Bahar joined as a researcher and secured a position at TCD (and had a baby - congratulations!). Visiting PhD student Xabi joined for 4 months and just became a father - congratulations! The lab is full with external users and summer students - great to have Sam, Surabhi, Ella, Leena, Caiden, and Gustavo in the lab - happy days! New group members will be joining soon!
A Biomimetic High Throughput Model of Cancer Cell Spheroid Dissemination onto Aligned Fibrillar Collagen
Really happy to see this work published - congratulations to Hossam! Read the full paper in SLAS Technology and listen to the podcast episode here.
Sawsan's latest publications
Sawsan had a couple of nice publications in the last two years (with more coming) - see her work in JACS Au (below), ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, and Peptide Science.
Latest publications from Fengyuan
Fengyuan had several nice papers in 2021 including in Small Methods and ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces!
High Aspect Ratio Polymeric Nanoneedle Arrays
Congrats to Colm on his paper in Macromolecular Materials and Engineering!
An engineered coccolith-based hybrid that transforms light into swarming motion
Happy to contribute to this 2021 paper in Cell Reports Physical Science - congrats to Mihai and Aitor and all co-authors.
User Meeting
We are holding the UCD AFM Users’ Meeting on April 26 from 10-12 on Zoom. With new AFM systems having arrived or due to arrive across the university, the meeting serves to give a forum for the community of users to showcase and discuss their research. The schedule for the meeting is shown below; we look forward to seeing you there (email brian.rodriguez@ucd.ie for Zoom invitation).
10:00 Welcome
10:03 Lecturer/Assistant Professor Dr Sourav Bhattacharjee, “AFM on mucin strands and its therapeutic implications”
10:14 Visakh Pillai (Benedetto group), “Amyloid-ionic liquid: an AFM based approach”
10:25 Dr Jacek Wychowaniec (Brougham group), “Quantitative nanomechanical properties evaluation of a family of β-sheet peptide fibres using rapid bimodal AFM”
10:36 Pallavi Kumari (Benedetto group), “Room temperature Ionic liquids reduce the mechano-elasticity of lipid bilayer: AFM force spectroscopy studies”
10:47 Hossam Ibrahim (Rodriguez group), “Spherical probe preparation for nano mechanical characterisation”
10:53 Deirdre Clissmann (Brennan group), “AFM analysis of a chemically crosslinked 3D cell culture model of the optic nerve”
10:59 Michelle Fox (Thorpe group), “Biomechanical assessment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma using AFM”
11:05 Agata Fularz (Rice group), “Nanoscale structuring of polymers”
11:16 Paven Thomas Mathew (Fang group), “Fundamental studies to achieve atomic scale material removal using atomic force microscopy”
11:27 Ciaran Barron (Zerulla group), “Sculpting plasmonic emitters using AFM lithography”
11:33 Louise Tackaberry (Rodriguez/Brougham), “Characterisation of PNIPAM microgels using AFM”
11:39 Tianyu Guan (Zhang group), “Modified AFM tip to determine the adhesion and friction between coating and polymer materials”
11:45 Dr Srikanth Kolagatla (Rodriguez group), “Localized contact potential measurements on battery anode materials”
11:51 Discussion
12:00 End
Magnetic Hydrogels: Spatiotemporally Resolved Heat Dissipation in 3D Patterned Magnetically Responsive Hydrogels
Great to see this work led by Prof. Dermot Brougham published in Small. Congrats to Trish and Jacek and all co-authors! From Small: “Dermot F. Brougham and co‐workers demonstrate 3D printable responsive magnetic hydrogels composed of magnetic iron oxide nanoflowers and Pluronic polymers that encode spatiotemporally controlled temperature increase and dye release on alternating magnetic field irradiation.“
"Replica molds of cicada wings give flight to possibilities of antibacterial surfaces"
Pleased to be involved with Prof. Susan Kelleher’s work on cicada wings with Dr Shauna Flynn as first author. The work was recently published in Biointerphases' Special Topic Collection: Biomimetics of Biointerfaces.
“Replica molding of cicada wings: The role of water at point of synthesis on nanostructure feature size,” by Shauna P. Flynn, Stephen Daniels, Brian J. Rodriguez, and Susan M. Kelleher, Biointerphases (2020). The article can be accessed here.
The work was selected as a featured article and an AIP Scilight.
