About me
I joined Agneta Richter-Dahlfors' group with the Swedish Medical Nanoscience center as a postdoctoral fellow in 2012. Here, I'm working to find solutions for problems in today's healthcare and medical sector. Working here gives me the chance to apply my interdisciplinary background from Life Sciences, Neuroscience, and Biomedical Engineering. I like learning new things everyday and seeing ideas progress from a thought to a sketch on a paper towel towards a scientific proof-of concept study to a device, that is actually helping people in real-life.
Research description
Organic electronics are a group of materials that combine the versability and flexibility of polymers with electronic conductivity. With the help of these conducting polymers, it becomes possible to built electronic devices from materials that have the same look and feel as the plastics, which we are using in our everyday life.
Really interesting is the fact that these materials can change their physical properties depending on how we adres them electronically. That means, we can actively transform one material into another by applying an electrical potential.
I'm investigating the use of these materials in Life Science and Medical applications as active surfaces for cell attachment, as delivery devices for neuroactive substances or as sensors for bacterial infection.
- Active Surfaces for cell Attachment/Release: We're using different redox states of the polymers to prevent attachment or release cells
- Artificial Synapse: We're using an organic electronic ion pump, which releases neurotransmitters with high spatiotemporal control and pair it with an entity for real-time neurotransmitter detection
- Epithelial Integrity Sensing: We're using an organic electronic sensor, which has a large active surface area due to the porosity of the polymer to detect the paracellular diffusion at an epithelial cell layer.
Education
PhD: ”Towards closed-loop Deep Brain Stimulation – An integratedApproach for Neural Recording and Microstimulation” Department for Signal Processing, Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Lübeck, Germany
BSc: Molecular Biotechnology, University of Lübeck, Germany (Thesis: ”High frequency electrical stimulation in the caudate nucleus in vivo: Quantification of the neurotransmitters GABA and glutamate”
MSc: Molecular Life Sciences, University of Lübeck, Germany (Thesis: ”Characterization of the HFS induced GABA release in the corpus striatum of the rat in vivo”