The IEEE EMBS fourth biennial Conference on Micro and Nanotechnology in Medicine was held in Kauai, Hawaii from 10-14 December 2018. Chemmat’s Head of Department, Assoc Prof Ashvin Thambyah attended the meeting at which the “biomedical grand challenges facing our society” were addressed at “the scale of biology with Micro and Nanoscale technologies.”

At this ‘Gordon Conference’ style meeting, top researchers from the universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Berkeley, and Wisconsin presented their career journeys in developing new technologies for diagnostics, therapeutics, enhancement of physiological function, disease management, or early monitoring and prevention.

Tejal Desai from UCSF, by using micro and nanostructured materials was able to modulate the therapeutic microenvironment and enhance both implant performance and the host response.

Erkin Seker of UC Davis similarly was able to tune mass transport of biomolecules by controlling the multiscale morphology of miniaturised devices.

In the wearable sensors field, Wei Gao (not to be confused with our very own Wei Gao) from Caltech, showed his latest advances in sensing physiology, based on his earlier work where he developed sensors that could measure in real-time a range of important metabolites, including glucose, from sweat!

Ashvin also had the opportunity to meet one of the invited speakers, Professor Lim Chwee Teck, who, like many of the speakers at the conference, has an impressive research track record that includes high-level science publications as well as commercially successful research enterprises. His nature-published work on capturing circulating cancer cells is directly related to a clinical and commercial application that has recently been listed on the stock market as an initial public offering.

Prof Lim has kindly accepted an invitation to visit Auckland this year and will give a couple of seminars. He will also discuss with university staff members on future research ideas and collaborations.