Bionic people, living buildings, implants that become living bone and artificial muscles… Welcome to the strange world of materials science.

We are about to enter a new materials age, one that challenges the very notion of material itself. Bionic people with synthetic organs and even brains, living buildings and objects that heal themselves will become the norm.

On Friday 14 March, during the Alex Hopkins lecture: strange material, Professor Mark Miodownik, materials engineer from University College London and BBC Science Club presenter will review the changes to the material world that are coming our way.

Speaking about the future of synthetic bodies and whether this could mean we live forever, Professor Miodownik said: “I think what we will see is that disability, due to ageing or accidents will become treatable to a greater and greater extent. Replacement organs will undoubted become normal for most people as they get older. We will not necessarily need to become more synthetic, as the replacement kidney, livers, hips and knees are likely to be grown from our own cells, a technology made possible by collaborations between materials scientists and medics. For many technological and economic reasons, living forever is unlikely to be a real prospect, but I think it will be fairly normal to be able ski and play tennis at the age of 100.”

Professor Miodownik will also be giving a talk on Saturday 15 March entitled Stuff matters, during which he will talk about concrete that can heal itself, implants that become living bone and liquids that flow upwards. He will use demonstrations to explain why the world is about to become a lot stranger.

Professor Molly Stevens heads a large multidisciplinary team, from surgeons to engineers, specialising in biomedical materials and regenerative medicine at Imperial College London. She has won multiple prestigious scientific prizes and was one of The Times top ten scientists under the age of 40 in 2010. On Wednesday 12 March, during the WiSETI lecture: growing organs and other small challenges, Professor Stevens will be talking about her research on designing materials for biosensing and regenerative medicine; the result of team work between materials scientists, bioengineers, cell biologists, physicists, chemists and surgeons in her group. This is WiSETI’s (Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Initiative of the University of Cambridge) flagship annual event, sponsored by Schlumberger Cambridge Research, where a distinguished woman scientist is invited to speak about her life and work.

Describing her team’s research, Professor Stevens said: “Our research spans several different areas from applications in biosensing to applications in regenerative medicine. At the heart of it though, we have a strong expertise focussed on designing materials to interface with biology. So, in regenerative medicine, we are making materials to act as scaffolds to regenerate tissues as diverse as bone, cartilage and heart; whilst at the same time we have been very successful in the development of new nanomaterials that can enable the early detection of diseases such as cancer. To do this sort of research requires excellent collaborators and a very multidisciplinary team in house – my team has engineers, chemists, biologists, physicist and even surgeons.”

On the subject of tissue engineering emerging as one of the key areas of medical research, Professor Stevens believes that within the next 10 years we will see more and more lab-based inventions making it through to clinic. “The applications that researchers are focusing on are widespread from helping to stop scaring in the heart after heart attacks to preventing degeneration within the nervous system amongst many important goals,” she said.

Dr Stoyan Smoukov, Head of the Active and Intelligent Materials Lab, Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge will be giving a talk about artificial muscles on Saturday 22 March. His talk will demonstrate various materials that are being used to develop artificial muscles. A wireless microscope will be used to examine these structures. The scattering of light from small soft-lithographic structures will be shown, and how the spacing of light-dots can be used to monitor very sensitively stretching and bending of a material.

Dr Smoukov said: “Materials today can move, change shape and even colour; they do so much more than people often assume. We are trying to do many of those things at the same time and have recently made micro-muscles that move and also have memory. Other muscles we’ve created can work in the vacuum of space and on command change shape from a European football to an American football (sphere to a long elipsoid). These kind of intelligent materials, which can both sense and move will be further blurring the lines between living and artificial/’dead’ materials.”

The presentation will try to lift some of the magic veil behind some fascinating phenomena from everyday materials, and also perhaps create wonder about some not-so-common ones.”

Other talks, debates and demonstrations relating to materials science, include:

• Thursday 13 March, SciBar: breaking and building bones. Science in a bar! What happens when bones break and what materials can we use to repair them? Come and explore the structure of bone tissue and implants from the perspective of materials science and engineering with Dr Rose Spear.
• Sunday 16 March, Dr Erica Bithell, Teaching Officer in Physical Sciences within the Institute of Education and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge will be giving a talk, It’s simpler with symmetry. Dr Bithell will be revealing what the palaces of emirs, high-tech materials and broccoli have in common and showing how symmetry and structure bring together stunning works of art, natural forms and cutting-edge technology.
• Saturday 22 March, PhD students, Ed Pickering and Lucy Fielding from the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, University of Cambridge will be giving a talk, Steel: probably the best material in the world. They will show how steel is probably the most important material ever used – almost every man-made object in the world is either made from steel or has been made using it – and explore what makes steel such a special material, the history of its use, and how it continues to be developed. While it’s true that the Iron Age ended centuries ago, we are lucky enough to live in the Steel Age today.

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