Category: vacancy

A 3D-Printed Blood-Brain-Barrier-on-a-Chip for Agrochemical Permeability Studies – CASE Studentship

The blood-brain barrier (BBB) tightly regulates the flow of material between the bloodstream and the brain. One of the big problems faced by a range of sectors, from pharmaceuticals to agrochemicals, is understanding how compounds interact with and cross this barrier. One approach to solving this problem is to design model systems that reproduce the behaviour of the BBB in a lab.

Throughout the project, you will work in close collaboration with our industrial partner, Syngenta, to study how agrochemicals interact with your model BBB, enabling you to develop a tool for future interrogation of neuropathy, inflammation and axonal degeneration. With 59,000 employees in more than 100 countries, the Syngenta Group is a leading technology company for sustainable agricultural innovation. Syngenta’s mission is to offer large and small farming businesses the tools to address a wide range of challenges associated with crop productivity and health, to manage the effects of climate change and to help preserve biodiversity. Ultimately, innovations from Syngenta Group’s crop protection and seeds divisions help farmers to ensure sustainable food, feed, fiber and fuel production.

Click here for more details, or email directly to Dr Joe Forth or Dr David Dickens.

Are you an academic with proven abilities to carry out high quality research in dentally-relevant science in a research-intensive Russell Group University? Are you passionate about delivering an exceptional student experience in dental materials science? Do you want to be a key member of an internationally renowned team working in a stimulating and supportive environment?

Closing Date – 26 July 2023

We are looking for an outstanding early career academic of high potential who is able to demonstrate a growing track record in research, student education and academic leadership. You will join us as a lecturer and have an emerging track record in development and/or characterisation of dentally-relevant materials which are aligned with the research priorities of the School of Dentistry.

You will deliver world class research, inspirational teaching and post-graduate research student supervision. As a Lecturer, you will have the ability to develop strategies for interdisciplinary research and innovation, to secure research funding and have a clear view of how your research will be translated to achieve societal/ healthcare and/ or economic impact. You will be expected to have established collaborations with academic and/or industrial partners. 

You will provide an excellent student education experience for undergraduate and taught postgraduates in the School of Dentistry. The undergraduate teaching focus will be centred on the delivery of dental materials science to students on our MChD Dental Surgery (MChD) and Dental Hygiene and Therapy (BSc) programs. The postgraduate focus will be centred on providing module leadership and delivery of content for our MSc in Dental Materials.      

Dental Materials is part of the School of Dentistry’s Division of Oral Biology, currently based on level 7 of the Wellcome Trust Brenner Building at the University’s St James’ Hospital Campus. Additional laboratories and the School’s teaching are based on the University’s main campus in the Worsley Building. You will be based across both sites as and when required in the delivery of your duties. A free staff shuttle bus running every 20 minutes provides easy access between the two sites.

See here for more details

The Henry Royce Institute (Royce) is the UK’s home of advanced materials research and innovation. The £235m Institute will allow the UK to grow its world-leading research and innovation base in advanced materials science, an area which is fundamental to all industrial sectors and the national economy. Royce brings together world-leading academics from across the UK, and works closely with industry to ensure commercialisation of fundamental research. Strategic investment in the Biomedical Materials research area has enabled us to develop comprehensive suites of equipment to ‘make, characterise and test’ biomedical materials which will help accelerate the development of advanced materials in the healthcare sector.

The Technical Specialist will be primarily responsible for experimental techniques associated with cell culture and analysis of cell/tissue behaviour on surfaces, and the imaging of cell and materials in biologically relevant environments. You will grow and oversee an internal and external user community of researchers, students and industry collaborators and customers. You will provide training, advice and support to facility users on the use of a wide range of scientific equipment and the interpretation of acquired data.

You will be an experienced experimentalist, with an ability to acquire high quality data using advanced and highly specialised cell culture techniques to assess biological interactions with materials and surfaces.  A proactive and energetic approach is important, as is an ability to establish a good rapport with research students, staff, external customers and visitors.  A degree, or equivalent qualification, in a relevant science or engineering discipline is required, as well as experience of working in a research facility environment associated with cell culture practices, safety protocols relating to the operation of a Class 2 Biosafety lab and the imaging and characterisation of cells and materials using light based fluorescent techniques. A postgraduate degree in Molecular Biology, Cell Biology or related field is desirable.

FOR MORE DETAILS CLICK HERE.

Excellent opportunity here for a fully funded 3.5 year PhD: Lifetime prediction of implanted electronics operating at increased relative humidity.

Lifetime prediction of implanted electronics operating at increased relative humidity – Kings College London.

Aim of the project:

Active implants, like cochlear implants, must guarantee decades of safe operation in the body, surrounded by fluid. Without protection, electronics exposed to such conditions would rapidly corrode. Most implants, irrespective of the clinical application, achieve long-term reliability by sealing the electronics inside a hermetic enclosure, to prevent the ingress of moisture.

However, no enclosure is perfectly hermetic, water vapor does penetrate at a very slow rate. With technological advances and the miniaturisation of electronics (future implants will have free internal volumes < 1 mm3), even this slow rate is becoming a challenge. Operating at elevated relative humidity introduces new failure mechanisms, we need new understandings, to develop a new method to predict microimplant lifetime [Vanhoestenberghe 2013].

We believe that it is possible to create micro-implantable-devices that operate safely for the required lifetimes despite the internal relative humidity being elevated, and the aim of this project is to design experiments to rigorously evaluate this claim. The outcome will be a new understanding of the lifetime of such microdevices, enabling us to deliver a range of new clinical applications.

Project description:

This project is a study of the reliability, and failure mechanisms, of electronics in biomedical applications, specifically electronics packaged in hermetic or semi-hermetic enclosures. This is a technology development project, at this stage no specific clinical application is targeted. Our aim is to ensure the safety and long-term reliability of the next generation of active implantable micro-devices, for applications such as brain computer interfaces, wearable sensors, spinal cord stimulators. This very timely work will support the rapidly developing field of bioelectronics medicine.

Our focus is on the failure of ICs over time as a function of environmental conditions typically found in implants and wearable devices. There will be several competing failure mechanisms to study, we expect in particular to see both wirebond failure and corrosion of the integrated circuits (IC) [Gan 2014]. One challenge will be to conceive an experimental protocol that can discriminate between these failure mechanisms to evaluate their relative contribution to the failure rate. A second challenge is the need to accelerate the failure rate, since implants should operate safely for decades, yet it would be impractical to run an experiment for such a long period. Instead, the environmental stresses (temperature and relative humidity) are increased, to accelerate the failure rate and observe failures within months [Hallberg 1991].

The candidate will design an innovative experimental protocol and build the associated equipment, to control the accelerated aging environment and automatically collect data on the failure rate of electronics. We are interested in the effect of the residual ionic contaminants that remain after the final cleaning steps during assembly. The student will validate their equipment and prepare the samples in year 1 (Y1), run the experiment (Y2) and analyse the data to acquire a new understanding of the time to failure, and acceleration, based on a comparison with measurements taken on day 0 (Y3).

As with every novel equipment, the final ageing protocol is unknown at this stage, it will be designed by the candidate. We anticipate that for IC corrosion, the samples will be CMOS ICs with InterDigitated Electrodes (IDE) on the top metal layer. Monitoring the impedance between the electrodes gives information about the corrosion of the IC, a method we and others have used successfully in previous work [Vanhoestenberghe 2013, Lamont 2021]. Aged wirebond reliability will be evaluated using a different test sample design, that will be developed by the student. After a period under test, the samples will be characterised by complementary methods, such as SEM, Focused Ion Beam imaging including Transmission Electron Microscopy and Time of Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry as appropriate. Some of these methods may be available in house, other characterisation will be performed collaboratively with research partners, such as the Fraunhofer Institute for Reliability and Microintegration IZM in Berlin.

This project is multi-disciplinary, and therefore we are open to candidates with a broad range of backgrounds, whether in electronics, electrochemistry, biomedical engineering or material sciences. What we look for is commitment to rigorous scientific enquiry, and a desire to conduct research that can make a difference in people’s life.

For more info please email Prof. Anne Vanhoestenberghe – email a.vanhoest@kcl.ac.uk or check here.