AME - Additive Manufacturing of Micro/nanofibers for Tissue Engineering
Professor H.B. Chang's research group focuses on building fibrous materials for use at the biotic-abiotic interface with biology and medicine. Specifically, we are deeply interested in exploring cutting-edge manufacturing technology, materials, mechanical and tissue engineering to apply multi-scale and multi-functional fibers with living systems. Our goal is to understand, control and, ultimately, enhance the performance of biological systems.
Undergraduates participate in all phases of this research, from materials synthesis, development of manufacturing platform, fiber spinning and characterization, cell culture, disease modeling, drug delivery and in vitro assessment.
H.B. Chang is an incoming Assistant Professor in the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, USA starting from January 2025. I am currently a postdoc fellow at Harvard Medical School & Brigham Women's Hospital and works on drug delivery. My research experience includes development of the micro/nano-scale fiber manufacturing with controlled fiber alignment in 3D geometries. The system has been used to manufacture the first biohybrid model of human helical ventricles (Science, 2022) and antimicrobial food packaging directly on food (Nature Food, 2022). Prior to coming to Harvard, I got my Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). At Georgia Tech, my research mainly focuses on the synthesis and characterization of sustainable materials-based (such as cellulose and lignin) high-performance polymer and carbon fibers. Until now, I have published 11 first-author papers, and more than 20 co-author papers on prestigious journals like Science, Nature Food, Annual Review of Materials Research, ACS Applied Materials & Interface, and Carbon. These research experiences greatly benefited my scientific training in multidisciplinary fields combining Polymer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering.
At Notre Dame, our group's focus will be on the three-dimensional(3D) fibrous materials platforms development using biomaterials for precisely control of the fiber composition, stiffness, size, and alignment in complex 3D geometries. Using these fibrous materials manufacturing platforms, we aim to study the structure-function relationship between extracellular matrix and whole-organ function/dysfunction to understand diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and develop next generation drug delivery system.