The Biomaterials Lab hosted the 2nd Annual Biofabrication Workshop on February 27, 2019. Around 50 attendees came from across the United States. Undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, scientists, and professors from academia and industry participated in the day-long event.
This year the workshop welcomed speakers presenting topics ranging from bioprinting methods to nanofabrication topics. Speakers included Dr. Matthew Peña, Dr. Tim Gilheart, Julio Aleman, Ryan Lutrell, and Stephanie Davis. Dr. Helen Lu, Vice Chair and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, gave the keynote presentation on Biofabrication for Interface Tissue Engineering.
Course material covered advanced topics in bioprinting and biofabrication such as printing with cellular components, assessing printability of custom materials, design considerations for 3D printing, and presurgical planning with 3D printing. Presenters and attendees also discussed techniques including bioprinting, melt-electrospinning writing, fusion deposition modeling, and more. Attendees were given a chance to bring their own biomaterial and work with experts to create a printing paradigm with it on bioprinters available in the Biomaterials Lab. Other hands-on exercises included learning how to use a 3D printing welding technique to construct complex tissue scaffolds and how to print vascularized structures for organ-on-a-chip models.
Thank you to everyone who helped make the event a success, including our sponsors from Stratasys (https://www.stratasys.com/) and CellInk (https://cellink.com/). We look forward to hosting the Biofabrication Workshop again next year.