biointerface lab

Team leader

Marta Cerruti

Marta is Canada Research Chair in"Bio-synthetic interfaces" since October 2011, and Professor in Mining and Materials Engineering at McGill since December 2021. She started her career as an Assistant Professor in the department in September 2009. Currently, she is the Vice-President of the "Canadian Chapter of the Controlled Released Society". She is also board member of the Regroupement Quebecois "Center for Self-Assembled Chemical Structures", member of the "Center for Bone and Periodontal Research", the Controlled released society, the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, the American Chemical Society, the Canadian Biomaterials Society, and several others. She is Associate Member of the Faculty of Dentistry and of the Department of Bioengineering at McGill.
Marta received her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Torino in 2004, where she studied bioactive glasses for bone regeneration. She spent one year of her Ph.D. at the University of Florida, where she worked in collaboration with NovaMin Technology, one of the companies making Bioglass. After her Ph.D. she worked as a post-doctoral fellow at North Carolina State University for 2 years, and then at UC Berkeley for another 2 years. During these 2 post-docs she studied DNA sensors, explosive detection, graphene surface modification, RNA-mediated nanoparticle synthesis, and antimicrobial surfaces.
Her main interests are understanding and controlling surface phenomena, especially at the interface between synthetic materials and biological molecules. Currently she teaches MIME261 (Structure of Materials), MIME317 (Analytical and Characterization Techniques), MIME345 (Applications of Polymers), MIME515 (Material Surfaces: a Biomimetic Approach). She is strongly involved in outreach to undergraduate students and the society in general, as well as in the improvement of the safety culture at McGill University.

Post Doctoral students

Gabriele Capilli

Capucine Guyot

PhD students

Dhanalakshmi Jeyachandran

Dhana is from Chennai, India. She received her B.Tech degree in Nanotechnology from SRM University, Chennai in the year 2013 where she worked on Lipid Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery and she received her Masters degree in Nanomedicine from Amrita Centre for Nanosciences, Kochi in 2015 where she worked on developing Silver nanoparticle impregnated catheters for preventing infection in Hydrocephalus shunt systems with Dr. Manzoor Koyakutty. After that, she moved to Canada and joined Dr. Cerruti's lab in Winter 2017 to pursue her PhD.

• Office: 2530, Wong Building
• Phone: (514) 398-4755 Ext. 09503

Yiwen Chen

Yiwen comes from Liaoning Province, northeast of China. She received her B.Eng. (2014) and M.Eng. (2017) degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Science and Technology Beijing. During her study in USTB, she focused on the research of carbon dioxide responsive materials, including highly sensitive microgels and emulsions. After that, Yiwen joined Professor Cerruti’s group as a PhD student to explore the bio-application of graphene. In her spare time, she enjoys swimming, singing, writing Chinese calligraphy, and watching movies.

Vivienne Tam

Bo Wang

Nima Zakeri

Nima was born and raised in Kurdistan, Iran. He moved to Tehran to study for his bachelor's in biomaterials engineering at the Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran’s polytechnic) in 2015. During his undergraduate studies, he got interested in hydrogels and tissue engineering, and for his bachelor's thesis, he worked on oxygen delivery to liver cells through their symbiosis with encapsulated microalgae. He also got a minor in polymer science during this time . In 2019, he continued his Master's at the same university and in the same program while focusing his research on metal oxide-based breath sensors. In 2021, he joined Professor Cerruti’s lab as a PhD student to study stimuli-responsive graphene oxide systems. Aside from academics, he enjoys playing guitar, listening to jazz music, walking, hiking, and playing tennis.

Master's students

Victor Zhou

Victor was born and raised in Canton (Guangzhou). Before he enrolled in McGill University in 2018, he attended high school in Toronto, ON since 2015. He was in his last year of materials engineering undergraduate student when he joined the Professor Cerruti’s Biointerface lab in Sept 2022, to work on the implementation of organic acids coating for nanoparticles and its associated upconversion process in drug delivery, under the supervision of Vivienne Tam. During his free time, he enjoys watching televisions, tutoring his fellow undergraduates, reading newspaper, and design drawing using AutoCAD.

Alumni 

 

Sam Xian

Sam was born and raised in Canton  (Guangzhou), China. Prior to coming to McGill in 2019, he attended high school in Vancouver, BC. He was a third-year Materials Engineering student when he joined Professor Cerruti’s lab, in March 2022, to work on elastin calcification modelling, under the supervision of Kirk. Sam loves spending his free time fishing and keeping reptiles.

Rus Trana

Rus spent most of his childhood in suburban Indiana, but also spent time in Shanghai and Victoria. He is going into his 3rd year of Materials Engineering at McGill but is considering a switch into Bioengineering. He joined the lab in March 2022 as a SURE student under Vivienne working on combining the previously developed up-conversion nanoparticles and hydrogel microneedles into one cohesive system. In his free time Rus enjoys managing the engineering ice cream store (Frostbite), cooking, taking care of his plants, and hanging out with his friends.

Siyu Liu

Siyu was born and grew up in China. He received his B.Eng. (2015) and M.Eng. (2017) degrees in Materials Processing Engineering from Nanchang University and Harbin Institute of Technology, respectively. For his master’s thesis, he focused on a hot forming process of metal plates for high-speed railway applications. He also explored microstructures and mechanical properties of electro-deposited nickel-cobalt alloys at high temperatures during his master’s studies. He is now a PhD candidate in Professor Francois Barthelat and Professor Cerruti’s groups, on the mechanical properties of graphene oxide paper-like materials. He enjoys playing tennis in his free time.

Vivienne Liu

Vivienne (Yiwei) Liu was born and raised in Shandong, China. She moved to Vancouver in 2015 and have been living in Canada since then. Vivienne is in her second year of pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Materials Engineering at McGill university. She is joining in the Biointerface lab in May 2021 as a SURE student. Under Vivienne Tam’s supervision, she is working on upconversion nanoparticles for on-demand drug delivery. In her free time, she enjoys playing classical guitar, hiking, and skiing.

Ore-Oluwa Olasubulumi

Ore-Oluwa was born and raised in Nigeria. She is currently an undergraduate 4th year student in the bioengineering department at McGill University. She joined the lab in September 2020 under the supervisison of Vivienne and is working on optimizing nanoparticle infused microneedles for the purpose of controlled drug release. She loves reading and brainstorming ideas.

Anne Kyung

Anne spent much of her childhood in Sherbrooke, Quebec but currently resides in the Toronto area. She is completing her undergraduate studies in Bioengineering at McGill. Anne joined the lab in Summer 2021 through the SURE program, working on modelling and detecting medial calcification under the supervision of Tao.

Hao Li 李皓

Hao was born and grew up in Nanjing, China. She graduated from Materials Engineering at McGill University in 2019. During her undergraduate time, she spent 8 months in the Biointerface lab working on the bone integration of polyetheretherketone(PEEK) via surface modification under the guidance of Emily Buck. She also spent 8 months working in the National Research Council of Canada focusing on the fabrication and characterization of the nanotube composites. Hao started her Master’s Thesis in May 2019.

Emily Buck

Emily grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, PA, and she attended Drexel University where she completed her BS and MS degrees through an accelerated degree program. At Drexel, Emily studied Materials Science and Engineering and completed minors in French and Chemistry. For her master’s thesis, she studied crosslinking of electrospun poly(allylamine) fibers with two different crosslinking agents to improve the stability of the fibers in aqueous environments for use as a water filtration membrane. She also investigated the modification of chitosan electrospun fibers with thiol groups for water filtration applications during her master’s studies. After completing her master’s, Emily participated in the Whitaker International Program in order to work with Dr. Hubbell’s research lab in Switzerland at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) for one year. As a Whitaker Fellow, Emily worked with a PhD student to engineer the growth factor, CXCL-12, for improved heart tissue regeneration after an ischemia. Through the Whitaker Program, Emily was able to gain experience in the field of biomaterials before beginning her PhD at McGill with Dr. Cerruti. In her free time, Emily enjoys cooking, skiing, biking, and traveling to learn about new cultures.

Sophia Smith

Sophia was born in Canada but spent most of her childhood in Australia before returning to Canada permanently in 2009. She completed her undergraduate degree in Materials Engineering CO-OP at McGill University in 2017. During her undergraduate degree she spent 8 months working in the field of biomaterials, specifically on the creation and characterization of various sol-gel derived bioactive glass compositions. She also spent 4 months working in Grenoble, France in the field of energy materials, developing new catalytic systems for the electroreduction of CO2. Sophia is now undertaking a Masters with the Biointerface lab. Her work focuses on using in-situ FTIR to understand the surface structure of natural and synthetic enamel with titanium ion inclusions.

Yara Oweis

•     Office: M58, Strathcona Anatomy & Dentistry
•     Email: yara.oweis@mail.mcgill.ca

Ophélie Gourgas

Ophélie comes from Montpellier, a city in the South of France. In 2012, she received a B. Sc. degree in Chemistry from the University of Lyon in France. Then, she graduated in Drug Sciences, specialization "Analytical Development and Biopharmaceutics", at the University of Lyon in 2014. During this time, she did an internship at the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Montreal. Her thesis project title was "The embedding of chitosan-based nanogels in macrogels for the controlled release of active substances for the local treatment of defective cartilage". In January 2015, Ophélie joined Prof. Cerruti’s group as a PhD student. Her research is focused on the understanding of the effect of elastin on blood vessel mineralization and the interactions between elastin and a biomineralization inhibitor, the matrix-gla-protein (MGP).

Bruno Marcoux

Bruno grew up in the Netherlands, and is now completing his B.Eng in Materials Engineering at McGill University He is currently working on Bioglass scaffolds for bone regeneration under Dhanlakshmi Jeyachandra. More specifically, his project involves creating a doped bioglass optimized for a PLGA composite scaffold.

Dominic Esmail

  Dominic was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. As of 2017, he is pursuing a bachelor's degree at McGill University. Starting off his co-op work terms, he joined the Biointerface Lab in May 2019 under the guidance of Yiwen Chen, as part of McGill's Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE). He is currently working on improving the mechanical properties of emulsion-templated scaffolds, which could potentially be used for bone tissue applications. In his spare time, Dominic enjoys playing squash, as well as classical music.

Anh Tran

  I was born and grew up in Ho Chi Min city, VIetnam. I am currently a second year undergraduate student in Materials Engineering at McGill University and started working in the lab from May 2019 for the SURE project. under Bo's guidance. My project is to study the effet of nozzle's surface properties on the microstructure of injected GO suspension in continuous wet-spinnng assembly of GO films.

Danae Guerra

Danae comes from Hermosillo, a city in the northwest region of Mexico. In 2010 she received a B. Sc. degree in Chemical Engineering (major in Metallurgics) from Sonora University. Her undergraduate thesis involved the synthesis and evaluation of the bioactive properties of composites made of hydroxyapatite, wollastonite and chitosan, as scaffolds for bone regeneration. After finishing her undergraduate studies, she moved to Ensenada, Mexico, to start her Master in Materials Science and Engineering at the Nanotechnology and Nanomaterials Research Center (CNyN) from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). During her master, she worked on the functionalization of carbon nanotubes with cyclodextrins for pharmaceutical applications, and obtained her M. Sc. degree in 2013. To continue her studies in the biomaterials field, Danae joined Prof. Cerruti’s group in Winter 2014 as a PhD candidate. Her project focused on finding an alternative pathway to treat malaria from a biomaterial’s approach by inhibiting or reversing malaria pigment biomineralization.

• Office: 2450, Wong building
• Phone: (514) 398-4755 ext. 09501

Federico Aguilar Castellanos

Federico is a third-year undergraduate student in the Materials Engineering program at McGill University. He worked under the guidance of Dhanalakshmi Jeyachandran on a research project regarding the effects of the microporosity of composite scaffolds on the degradation of Bioglass particles. 

Caroline Loy

Caroline comes from France, where she completed a B. Sc degree in cellular and molecular biology and physiology at the Catholic University of the Vendée (ICES, France). Inspired by the desire to learn more than biology she took a series of courses on "Interdisciplinary Approaches in Life Sciences" and obtained her a M.Sc. Degree in Biomaterials Engineering at the Paris Institute of Technology (ParisTech) in 2011.
After her master, she moved to Canada to do a Ph.D. in biomaterials and tissue engineering at Laval University (Québec City). During this time, she developed a 3D multi-layer tri-culture model for vascular tissue regeneration using collagen gel as scaffold. To continue her studies in the field, Caroline joined Prof. Cerruti’s group in Fall 2017 as a postdoctoral fellow in collaboration with Prof. Mantovani at Laval University, aiming to further optimize her vascular tissue model with the addition of elastic fibers and provide a valid in vitro model for further studies of vascular patho-physiology. In her free time, she plays the cello, brews beers and walks with her dogs.
 

Jiaxin Zhang 张嘉歆

Jiaxin Zhang was born in Beijing, China. She is currently a fourth year Materials Engineering undergraduate student at McGill University. She started working in the lab from May, 2018 as a summer co-op student under the guidance of Kaiwen. Her project was the fabrication of graphene hydro gel.

Richard Church

Richard graduated from McGill University with a Bachelor’s of Materials Engineering in May 2016. During his time in the Material’s undergraduate program he spent 8 months of his COOP program working for the Biointerface Lab. During this time, he worked on three projects that were supervised by Kaiwen. The first involved using in situ FTIR spectroscopy to evaluate and track intercalated species content in multilayer graphene oxide membranes and was performed in collaboration with Professor Giuliana Magnacca at the University of Turin. This project resulted in a publication in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C. The second looked at the photocatalytic and absorptive properties of reduced graphene oxide hydrogels in combating organic pollutants and was performed in collaboration with Professor Paola Calza at the University of Turin. The final project involved using intercalated species to create graphene oxide-biomaterial hybrids. Richard started his Master’s Thesis in September 2016 where he continued to evaluate intercalated species in graphene oxide membranes focusing on how membrane structure and chemistry effect molecular intercalation, this knowledge should prove very useful in developing graphene oxide molecular sieves. As a side project, he continued his work on developing graphene oxide-biomineral hybrids.

Kaiwen Hu 胡楷汶

Kaiwen was born in Wuhan, China. He moved to the city of Shenzhen when he was three. At the age of 18, he decided to move to Canada for his undergraduate studies. He graduated in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Toronto in 2012. During this time he worked and did his thesis project "Fabrication of Advanced All Solid Electrochemical Capacitor" in the Flexible Energy and Electronics Lab at U of T. In September 2012 he joined Prof. Marta Cerruti's group as a PhD student working on graphene composites for anodes in Li-ion Battery. He was co-supervised by Prof. Szkopek (Electrical Engineering, McGill University).

Gul Zeb گل زیب

Gul Zeb was born in Pakistan. He completed his MSc degree in Functionalized Advanced Materials & Engineering from Universität Augsbrug (Germany) and Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) in 2010. During his master thesis in the group of Prof. Thomas Pardoen, he worked on the mechanical characterization of ultrathin films using microfabrication based techniques. Gul joined Prof. Marta Cerruti’s cluster in January 2011 as a PhD student and his research involved surface modification of carbon based materials for their application in Li-ion batteries. He was co-supervised by Prof. Szkopek (Electrical Engineering, McGill University). Gul is married and fathers a child.    

Mohamed Amine Menzour

I was born and grew up in Casablanca, Morocco. I completed a MSc degree in physical chemistry at Université du Québec à Montréal. During my master thesis in the groups of Mario Morin and Janine Mauzeroll, I worked on ‘Imaging electrocatalytic activity with scanning electrochemical microscopy’.  I got my Ph.D in chemistry from McGill University in 2015.  My Thesis title was ‘Directing the assembly of nanostructures on surfaces with molecular monolayers’. In 2016, I joined Prof. Cerruti’s group and Tamimi’s groups in collaboration with 3DRPD to work on the optimization of diazonium adhesives for dental application.

 Chiara Gionco

Chiara comes from Torino, Italy. She received her degree in Materials Science (Bachelor degree in 2008 and Master of Science in 2010) at Università di Torino. In January 2014 she obtained the Ph. D. in Chemical and Materials Sciences at Università di Torino, with a project in the fields of solid state chemistry and catalysis entitled “Inorganic Materials Based on Oxides Containing Photoactive Centers Responding to Light: New Preparative Approaches, Characterization and Applications”, supervisor Prof. Maria Cristina Paganini. She has been a visiting student (twice during her PhD Period, once during her PostDoc) to the Institut des Nanosciences de Paris (INSP) under the supervision of Dr. Slavica Stankic, to perform photoluminescence measurements on mixed oxides within the COST action CM1104 "Reducible oxides". She visited Prof. Cerruti’s group in Summer 2017, within the European Project "Mat4Treat", in order to synthesize and study hybrid metal oxide/reduced graphene oxide composite hydrogels for photocatalytic applications.
The main topics object of her scientific research activity was the synthesis and characterization of oxide based materials using a wide set of techniques, including Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR), with a particular focus on novel photoactive materials obtained by doping with Rare Earth (RE) ions oxides such as zirconium dioxide or zinc oxide.

Peng Zhang 张鹏

Peng received his B.Sc. degree in Chemistry at Anhui Normal University in 2008, where he studied the synthesis and catalytic properties of Fe3O4@Au core/shell nanoparticles. Then he started his Master’s and Ph.D. study in the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) in Beijing. In 2013, he became an assistant professor in IHEP, CAS. In the last 5 years, he worked on the ecotoxicity and behavior of engineered nanoparticles in environment and published over 17 papers and 2 book chapters. He has expertise and great interest in applying advanced nuclear techniques (e.g., radioisotope tracer techniques and synchrotron radiation techniques) into the environmental and nanotoxicity studies. By combining these advanced techniques with traditional toxicological and nanoscience methods, he systematically investigated the transformation and toxic mechanisms of rare earth oxide nanomaterials in various organisms including plant, bacteria, cell and mice. In March 2015, he joined Prof. Cerruti’s group as a postdoc fellow, aiming to bring his experiences and ideas into the work on vascular calcification.

Pearce Jones

Suliman Algezani

Suliman was born in Libya. He holds a bachelor degree in dental technology from Al-Mergb University. He worked as a teaching assistant at Alfateh University and he specialized in prosthodontics and dental materials over 3 years (2007-2010). Then he worked as a technician in private laboratories and he specialized in crowns and bridges and other methods to replace missing teeth, and as a volunteer at Al-Tawifiq clinic for a year. In 2013, he joined Prof. Faleh Tamimi and Prof. Marta Cerruti’s groups as a Master's Student. His research interests included surface modification of dental alloy and working to obtain a strong bond strength between metal alloys and polymers in dentistry applications by using a diazonium chemistry and to prove the biocompatibility of this method.

Audrey Laine

Audrey comes from Quebec City, Canada. In 2014, she received a B.Sc. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Laval University. Then she started a Master at the Laboratory for Biomaterials and Bioengineering under the supervision of Prof. Diego Mantovani. Audrey is also co-supervised by Prof. Marta Cerruti (McGill University) and Prof. J. Michael Lee (Dalhousie University). Her research focused on the investigation of structure-property relationships in the mechanics of soft tissues and particularly, in collaboration with Prof. Cerruti, on the effects of mineralization on their mechanical properties. She is currently working as a Jr. Engineer at OMP inc., Quebec.

Peter Gaskell

Peter graduated in Physics at the University of Oregon in 2004 and received his Master's in Electrical Engineering at McGill in 2009. He began his PhD in Electrical Engineering under the supervision of Prof. Szkopek and joined also Cerruti's group in June 2012. He worked on graphene composites for Li-ion battery applications. Peter finished his PhD study in Nov. 2016. He is now an R&D scientist at University of Michigan.

• Office: McConnell Engineering
• Phone: (514) 398-4400 Ext. 09875

Mohamed-nur Abdallah محمد نور عبدالله

Mohamed-nur was born in Paphos, Cyprus. He grew up in Jordan where he received his BDS degree in the Faculty of Dentistry from the University of Jordan in 2008. He worked for 3 years as a general dentist in Cyprus and Jordan before joining Prof. Tamimi’s group and Prof. Cerruti's group as a Master's student in 2011. He graduated from his Master's in June 2013 and started his PhD under the same professors in the Fall 2013.His research interests were: characterize the surfaces of implants and mineralized tissues, modify Titanium surfaces and evaluate their integration with epithelial tissues and their bonding with synthetic resins. Aside for his research, Mohamed-nur worked as a teacher assistant at the Faculty of Dentistry and was an active member of the Dentistry Graduate student council. Mohanmed-Nur finished his PhD in Dec. 2016 and is now a postdoctoral scholar at Prof. Tamimi's group.

Jilani Ghulam Roy غلام جیلانی راءے

I was born and grown up in central Punjab, Pakistan. I got my Bachelors in Metallurgical and Materials Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, Pakistan in August 2008. During my bachelors degree I worked on "The effect of post weld heat treatment on the mechanical and micro-structural properties of weldment between two dissimilar steels AISI 1045 and DIN 20MnCr5." I worked as QA/QC Engineer at Descon Engineering Limited and Ittefaq Sons Pvt. Limited for around one and half year, to acquire some corporate professional experience. I moved to South Korea in March 2010, to pursue my Master's in BioNano Engineering; an interdisciplinary program at Hanyang University, under the sponsorship of the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. During my Master's at the Functional BioNano Materials Lab under the supervision of Prof. Dong Woo Lim I developed hierarchical nano-structures of organic-inorganic hybrid materials for Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) based cancer bioimaging and smart drug delivery. We developed various nano-composite probes composed of clustered silver and gold nanoparticles embedded inside biocompatible polymeric particles and fibers via electrohydrodynamic (EHD) jetting for highly sensitive SERS based multiplexed cancer bioimaging and chemical trace analysis. We produced polymeric nanoarchitectures with distinct nanoscale compartments for multimodal drug carrying reservoirs. I joined Prof. Marta's lab in Sep 2012 as a PhD candidate. I finished my PhD and postdoctoral work May, 2016 and I joined Alentic microscience Inc. as a materials scientist.

• Website: www.facebook.com/jilaniroy

Sahar Nouri

Sahar was born and grew up in Tehran, Iran. After getting her bachelor’s in polymer engineering from Tehran Polytechnic and her master’s in chemical engineering from University of Tehran, she moved to Canada to pursue her doctoral studies. During her Ph.D. program at École Polytechnique de Montréal, she investigated the role of polymer chain architecture in melt rheology, crystallization and processability of poly(lactic acid). Sahar joined Prof. Cerruti’s group as a postdoc fellow working in collaboration with Prof. Tamimi (McGill, Dentistry) and 3DRPD. Her primary work was on metallic surface modification by graft polymerization with the aim of improving the bond between metallic and plastic parts. Sahar is now working as the Micro-Characterization Lab manager at Polytechnique de Montréal and also a research scientist at Safran Group chair on novel 3D composite materials for the aerospace industry.

Jinke Xu 徐锦棵

Jinke was born and grew up in the city of Harbin, northern China. In 2008, he received his B.Eng degree in Materials Science and Engineering, from Harbin Institute of Technology.In 2009, he decided to explore the world so he came to Canada. He received his M.Sc degree in Biosystems Engineering from the University of Manitoba within 2 years. In 2011, Jinke joined Prof. Cerruti's group as a PhD student, co-supervised by Prof. Barralet. He worked on catechol modified mucoadhesive chitosan hydrogels for drug delivery applications. In June 2015, Jinke completed his PhD studies, with the thesis title of "Mussel-Inspired Mucoadhesive Hydrogels for Drug Delivery". Since then, he became a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Cerruti's lab, working on surface modification to enhance cell functionalities. He finished his term in December 2015. Jinke is now a consultant at QuintilesIMS.

Hesam Mahjoubi حسام محجوبی

Hesam was born in Tehran, Iran. He received his bachelor degree in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Tehran in 2007. His undergraduate project was on “Superplastic Indentation Creep of Fine-Grained Sn-1%Bi Alloy” at the Formability Lab. Meanwhile, he became very interested in materials biomedical applications. In August 2008, for enriching his knowledge in biomedical engineering, he started his master in the Materials Science and Engineering department (Orientation in Materials for Biotechnological and Medical Applications) at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. During his master, he worked on several projects related to material bioapplications such as “Nanoparticles for Cancer Treatment Injectable Implants for Spine” at LTP. In 2010, after finishing his Master, Hesam joined Prof. Cerruti’s group as a research assistant and later on as a PhD student. He graduated in October 2015. He is currently working as a Prototyping & Scale-up Manager at Bioastra.

Mandana Bornapour برناپور ماندانا

Mandana was born and grew up in Tehran, Iran. In 2007, she received her B.Sc. degree in Material Science and Engineering from the University of Tehran. Her undergraduate project was focused on phase transformation control in Ni-Ti shape memory alloys for orthodontic applications. She started her Master's in Materials for Biotechnological and Medical Applications at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. She finished her M.Sc. project in Biomedical Engineering at EPFL and worked on the characterization of protected fibrin gels for bladder scaffold for tissue engineering. In 2010, Mandana came to Canada and joined Prof. Pekguleryuz’s group as PhD student working on the development of Mg-based biodegradable alloys. In 2012 she became co-supervised by Prof. Cerruti and member of the Biointerface Lab. She graduated from her PhD in December 2014 and since then she became a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Cerruti's laboratory, working on an industrial project in co-supervision with Prof. Tamimi and Patrick Lapointe from Walter Surface Technologies. Mandana left the group in November 2015 and she is currently working as a Scientist in Materials Science and Pharmaceutical development at Flexion Therapeutics.

Omar Alageel

Omar was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He received his B.Sc. degree in Dental Technology from King Saud University (KSU), Saudi Arabia in 2008. He then did a year of internship at the dental laboratories, National Guards Hospital, during which he evaluated materials including ceramics, metals and polymers for dental applications. Omar worked at KSU as a teaching assistant for one year in the college of Applied Medical Sciences. In 2011, he joined Prof. Faleh Tamimi’s and Prof. Marta Cerruti’s groups as a Master's Student. He graduated from his Master's in the Winter 2014, and has now started his PhD. Omar's research is focused on surface modification of dental materials and bonding between metals and polymers for dental applications.

• Office: M-60D, Stratchona Anatomy & Dentistry
• Phone: (514) 655-7117

Maria Laura Tummino

Maria Laura was born in Torino (Italy) in 1989. She studied at Torino University and received her Master's Degree in October 2013 with a thesis concerning the synthesis and characterization of different photocatalysts for pollutants removal. In 2014, she started a PhD at Torino University (under the supervision of Prof. Alessandra Bianco Prevot) in collaboration with the Institute for the Study of Nanostructured Materials in Palermo (Italy). She focused on the production of perovskite-type oxides for energy and environmental applications. She joined Prof. Cerruti's group in summer 2015 within the European Project "Mat4Treat", in order to exploit the properties of waste-derived substances for water remediation.

Marco Sarro

Marco was born in Aosta (Italy) in 1989. In October 2013, he received his MSc degree in Environmental Chemistry from Università degli studi di Torino. His undergraduate project was about environmental transformations of emerging contaminants in different matrices and characterization of transformation products with mass spectrometry. In January 2014 he began a Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Paola Calza to study composite materials for photocatalytic applications.

Luigi Capozzi

Luigi was born in Italy. He received his MSc degree in Chemical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino (Italy) in 2014. In BSc he conducted research in palladium-based catalysts for syngas production via methane steam-reforming. In his MSc research project worked on mathematical modelling of freeze-drying process of micro-particles. In 2015 he was a research assistant of Prof. Pisano (Politecnico di Torino) and collaborated with Prof. Sangermano and Prof. Barresi. He mainly worked on molecular encapsulation of ethylene in cyclodextrins, production of filled polymeric materials for gas release control, polysulfone-based membranes for wastewater treatment and mathematical modelling of transport phenomena in freeze-drying process. Moreover, he visited Prof. Cerruti's group to study the polydopamine-coated membranes for dyes removal.

Maryam Tavafoghi Jahromi مریم توافقی جهرمی

Maryam was born in Shiraz, Iran, and lived there until she was 22 years old. In 2006, she obtained her Bachelor of Science (BS) in Materials Engineering-Metallurgy from Shiraz University. Her BS project was about superplasticity of ceramics. She then left for Singapore to pursue a Master in the field of Mechanical Engineering-Manufacturing at Nanyang Technological University. For her Master’s project, she worked on the crystallization and growth kinetics of nano CeO2 powder prepared via homogeneous precipitation and also studied the sintering and mechanical properties of CeO2-based nano composite. In 2008 she finished her Master’s in Singapore, and went back to her home country. In winter 2010 she joined Mcgill for her PhD, and she worked with Prof Cerruti in the field of biomaterials engineering. For her PhD project, she worked on the synthesis of hydroxyapatite (HA), which is the main inorganic component of bone. Her goal was to determine the inhibitory or promoting effect of a variety of biomolecules like amino acids (AAs) and peptides on HA crystallization at physiological conditions. She passed her thesis defense in April 2015. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University. Maryam is now a postdoctoral fellow at University of Toronto

Leila Farahdel

Leila was an undergraduate student in Materials Engineering at McGill University. She started working on Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) from January 2014 under Jinke’s guidance. Her primary work was to study the adhesion between mucus and chitosan modified with catechols, such as DOPA and dopamine, by measuring the heat of interaction using ITC. She is currently a Master's student in the Department of Bioengineering at McGill University.

Nika Amehdi

Nika was an undergraduate student in Materials Engineering at McGill University. She started working on Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) experiments from June 2013 under Maryam's guidance. She worked through the Winter 2014 term as a COOP student, and was working with us part time during the Summer 2014. Her primary work was to study the interactions between ions and amino acids or hydroxyapatite both with ITC and IR spectroscopy.

Michel Bocourt Povea

Michel Bocourt Povea was born in Cuba. He received a BSc in Chemistry from the University of Havana in 2005 and in January 2008 he received an MSc degree in chemistry (mention in physical chemistry) from the same university. In his master thesis, he worked on the synthesis and characterization of chitosan-based hydrogels for drug controlled release in the group of Prof. Carlos Peniches Covas. In 2012 Michel came to Canada and joined Prof. Diego Mantovani’s group to pursue a second Master. Since 2013 he is co-supervised by Prof. Cerruti. Currently he is working in a company.

Sanahan Vijayakumar

Sanahan is a first year undergraduate student in Materials Engineering at McGill and started working with us in September 2012. Under Jinke and Elena’s guidance, he is working on the characterization of genepin cross-linked chitosan hydrogels.

Alvin Ma

Alvin is a student in McGill with a major in Materials Engineering and a minor in Biomedical Engineering. He started working during the Summer of May 2012 with Sara. He and Sara investigated the transformation of bioglass during scaffold processing using different surface characterization techniques. He came back to do a research project at the biointerface lab to develop a method to distinguish between dirty and clean spots on metal surfaces.

Fabrizio Sordello

Fabrizio was born in Cuneo (Italy) in 1984. In October 2008, he received his MSc degree in Chemistry from Università degli studi di Torino, Italy. His undergraduate project concerned the study of the coprecipitate products originating from arsenic contaminated groundwater in Bangladesh. His interest for research in the renewable energies brought him to begin a PhD in 2009 under the supervision of Prof. Claudio Minero in the domain of photocatalysis. In January 2012 Fabrizio defended his PhD thesis "Semiconductor photonic crystals: synthesis, characterization and applications". He worked as a post-doc in Prof. Cerruti's group to study the coupling between graphene and titanium dioxide in the context of a European IRSES project involving Università degli Studi di Torino (Italy), Politecnico di Torino (Italy), CSIC of Madrid (Spain), Saint Petersburg State University (Russia) and McGill University.

Tat Fong (Brandon) Ng

Brandon was born and grew up in Macao, China. He received his B.Eng. degree in Chemical Engineering from McGill University in 2012. During his undergraduate study, he conducted research in the Autologous Chondrocyte Implantation (ACI) for treating cartilage defects in the soft tissue biophysics laboratory, and in the simulation of glutamate diffusion in carbon nanotubes for drug delivery in the computational neurophysiology laboratory. He was a research assistant in Prof. Cerruti's group from June 2013 to April 2014, working on bond between metals and plastics and metals and metals. He is currently employed at Corrosion Service.

Anya Filina

Anya is an undergraduate student studying Materials Engineering at Mcgill University. Through the 2013 SURE program, she worked with Jinke to optimize a bioadhesive, injectable hydrogel for intraperitoneal drug delivery applications.

Kayne Li

Kayne is an Honours Mechanical Engineering student at McGill. He started working in the lab in May 2013 as a SURE student under Hesam. His project was focused on the Surface Modification of PLGA/PDLLA Electrospun Fibers for Skin Regeneration. Over the course of his project, he had to prepare PLGA/PDLLA fibers and bind caffeic acid to the scaffold for subsequent drug release.

Mario Martin Gallego

Mario was born in Madrid. In 2006-07 he obtained a degree in Industrial Engineering at the Rey Juan Carlos University. In 2009 he graduated as a Material Engineer at the same university. During the last year of college he received an Erasmus grant to work in the Politecnico of Torino. In 2009 he joined the National Spanish Research Council (CSIC) with a JAE-Pre grant to complete his PhD developing nanocomposites based on epoxy resins and carbon nanostructures. During the summer of 2013 he visited the Biointerface group at McGill University to decorate graphene surface with gold nanoparticles.

Isabel Pérez

Isabel was born in La Ceja, Colombia. She studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Antioquia in Medellin (Colombia) and graduated with a Master degree in Chemical Sustainable Process Engineering at the Polytechnic of Turin in Italy in Winter 2014. She worked in Marta's group from November 2012 to May 2013 within a project sponsored by the European Community on photovoltaics and graphene.

Elena Varoni

Elena was born in Biella (Italy) in 1984. In July 2008, she received her degree as Doctor in Dental Medicine at the University of Milan, Italy. She worked as a post-doctoral fellow in Prof Cerruti's group from May 2012 to May 2013. Her project focused on developing a bilayered chitosan-based scaffold for the regeneration of periodontal tissue, which is the apparatus supporting the teeth into the dental alveoli. Now she is working as a dental clinician and researcher at the Politecnico of Milano and University of Novara, Italy.

Guanhan Yao

Guanhan graduated in Biochemistry at McGill in 2013. She worked with us from June 2011 till when she graduated. Under Maryam's guidance, she studied the effect of amino acids on hydroxyapatite nucleation and growth. She co-authored the first of Maryam's papers.

Roger Ren

Roger is a fourth year undergraduate student in McGill Materials Engineering. He started working on Hydroxyapatite nucleation project from September 2012 under guidance from Maryam. His primary work is to bind amino acids on a polymer film (PDLLA) by activating the surface of the film.

Robert Liu

Robert is a Biochemistry student at Carleton University, located in Ottawa. He worked with us in the summer 2012 under the SURE program. His project was to optimize electrospinning of PDLLA to make nanofibers; Hesam helped him on this.

Jethro Sanz-Robinson

Jethro is a Chemistry student at McGill. He worked with us in the summer 2012 after winning a CSACS summer internship fellowship, co-supervised by Prof. Wilkinson from the University of Montreal. His project was related to understanding the mechanism of hydroxyapatite nucleation. He worked with Maryam on this.

Sara Abdollahi

Sara has been a Master's student in our group from September 2010 to June 2012. She studied bioactive glasses and how they transform during their processing inside scaffolds. Currently she is a PhD student in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Toronto.

Ghareb Soliman

Ghareb worked as a post-doc with us from September 2011 to July 2012. He was co-supervised by Prof. Jake Barralet (Dentistry), and his research focused on chitosan-hydrocaffeic acid nanoparticles for oral drug delivery. He helped supervise Jinke during his stay with us. He left the group to become Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmacy at Assiut University, Egypt.

Xuân Tuấn Lê

Tuân worked as a post-doc with us from January to July 2011. His research focused on surface functionalization for applications in oral drug delivery and lithium batteries. Additionally, he has helped Maryam, Hesam and Zhong to modify various substrates with diazonium chemistry. He left the group to join Teledyne Dalsa, a semiconductor company based in Bromont, as "Professionnel d’ingénierie en technologies".

Zhong Yuang Luo

Zhong is a second year Materials Engineering student. He started working with us in May 2011, funded by an NSERC USRA fellowship. He is trying to improve the bond between titanium and poly(methylmethacrilate) for dental implant applications.

Moqing Wang

Mo is an undergraduate student in Anatomy and Cell Biology at McGill and has worked with us on several projects, from hydroxyapatite nucleation to bonding Ti to PMMA for dental prosthetics. She has been with us from June 2010 to June 2012.

Daniel Marchand

Daniel is a student in Materials Engineering at McGill, and he worked with us from August to December 2011. He investigated the precipitation of hydroxyapatite on composite PDLLA scaffolds.

Joyce Zaftis

Joyce is a second year student in Biochemistry at Concordia University, and worked with us in July-August 2011. She used a colorimetric method to determine the concentration of amino acids adsorbed on the hydroxyapatite particles synthesized by Maryam and Guanhan.

Harris Nami

Harris is a second year student in Materials Engineering at McGill, and worked with us in June-August 2011. He used Raman spectroscopy to characterize tooth and calcified aorta samples provided by Drs. Monzur Murshed and Faleh Tamimi.

Jessie Zhu

Jessie has worked with us from May to July 2011. Working with Maryam and Hesam, she improved our scaffold making technique, and has studied the precipitation of hydroxyapatite on PDLLA scaffolds and different ceramic particles. She is currently a third year student in Chemical Engineering at McGill.

Professors who visited in the past

Giuliana Magnacca

Casey Jones

Casey Jones began studying Chemistry at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, graduating in 2005. She then went on to receive her PhD in Chemistry from Princeton University in New Jersey in 2010 and began a NIH-funded post-doctoral position in Biomedical Engineering at Oregon Health and Science University, also in Portland. Her interests and areas of research focus during her training included organic synthesis, surface modification of metals and polymers, and cardiovascular device development. Utilizing these skills, Casey began her independent research career at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon in 2013 in the Chemistry Department. Her research focuses on the design of a stainless steel cardiovascular stent to release polyphenols found in red wine for the treatment of coronary heart disease. During her research sabbatical at McGill in the Fall of 2016, Casey joined the Cerruti lab and worked to develop robust methods for attachment of her molecules of interest to stainless steel using chemical and electrochemical grafting techniques.

Xingyi Xie

Xingyi is a professor at Sichuan University since 2010. His main research interests are construction of novel biointerfaces for in vivo endothelialization of vascular grafts and biomineralization of bone grafts. He has taken responsibility for three projects in those fields sponsored by the National Science Foundation of China and taken part in one project in vascular grafts from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. Now he has published over 25 papers in his research fields. Xingyi is very active in academic communication. In May of 2008, he was supported by China Scholarship Council to have a one-year visit to Laval University, Canada, where he synthesized polyurethanes with functional polyethylene glycol surface layer that has induced in situ endothelialization in two days as novel lumen for vascular grafts. He visited Prof. Cerruti’s group in 2014, and during this year he worked on graphene-based materials for bone biomineralization.

Maria Cristina Paganini

Maria Cristina Paganini is Assistant Professor at the University of Torino in Chemistry. She is interested in synthesis and characterization of inorganic materials. In particular she focused her attention in the study of the surface chemistry of inorganic solids and materials. In this context she mainly uses the Electron Paramagnetic Resonance technique (EPR) to the description of the surface of solids. She is co-author of almost 70 papers on international journals. She visited Prof. Cerruti's laboratory in 2014 in the context of a European project on photocatalysis.

Marco Sangermano

Marco is Assistant Professor in Politecnico di Torino, Materials Science Department. Marco's main activities are in the field of photopolymerization, polymer structure-property relation, tailoring formulations to achieve specific properties, surface modifications by fluorinated or silicone additives, and preparation of nanostructured polymeric coatings. He is co-author of 150 papers and 8 patents. He has visited Prof. Cerruti's lab at McGill in 2013 and 2014 for one month, funded by a European FP7 project, to study polymer/graphene materials for photocatalysis and energy applications.

Antonella Bandiera

Antonella is Assistant Professor in the Life Sciences Department at the University of Trieste. She has developed Human Elastin-Like Polypeptides (HELPs)as recombinant versions of elastin with the purpose of enhancing the native protein's ability to self-assemble. Currently her work is focussed on exploring the potential of these biopolymers for biotechnological and biomedical purposes. She visited Prof. Cerruti's group in the summer 2012, sponsored by CSACS scientist-in-residence program, with the goal of exploring the potential of HELPs as substrates to study the molecular mechanism of biomineralization of soft tissues.