Institute for Functional and Regenerative Materials

The Institute for Functional and Regenerative Materials fosters and grows the collaborative work of researchers across colleges to accelerate, advance and apply the discovery of materials with direct applications to improving our lives, environment, and health.

The pilot Institute for Functional and Regenerative Materials brings together faculty from the colleges of engineering, liberal arts and sciences, dentistry, pharmacy and medicine. Their focus will draw on UIC’s interdisciplinary expertise and world-class research facilities to design and test new materials that have promise for medical treatments, environmental remediation and energy storage.

The initiative’s research will combine functional imaging — developing new advanced microscopy techniques to characterize the structure of adaptive, smart and biological materials — with the invention of functional biomaterials. These novel materials could be used to regenerate tissue, heal wounds, treat disease or create new laboratory models to test drugs.

The group will soon begin a search for postdoctoral researchers, and they plan to start a symposium and speaker series later this year. The pilot institute is co-directed by Eben Alsberg, Richard and Loan Hill Chair of biomedical engineering; Luisa DiPietro, professor of periodontics; and Robert Klie, professor and head of physics.

• Pilot research institutes kindle interdisciplinary activity across UIC (by Rob Mitchum)