KU engineering professor, research leadership team member wins research award

LAWRENCE — A professor of engineering and a member of the senior investigate management staff at the University of Kansas is being honored for top investigation that fuses biology, resources science and engineering into restoring tissue functions, addressing dental and oral health conditions and restoring oral overall health as nicely as building sustainable and renewable biobased products for many sectors.

Candan Tamerler is the 2023 winner of the Distinguished Scientist/Engineer Award, offered by the Practical Materials Division of the Minerals, Metals & Products Modern society, the primary group for extra than 12,000 member scientists and engineers performing in industry, academia and authorities about the earth. She will obtain the award March 20 in San Diego during the society’s 152nd yearly conference.

“I’m deeply honored and humbled to receive this prestigious award,” Tamerler said. “I am grateful to the award committee, my colleagues and primarily for my analysis workforce and college students.”

Tamerler, the Charles E. & Mary Jane Spahr Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Bioengineering Software at KU, is currently being cited for her exceptional contributions to the area, notably in integrating biological mechanisms into the design and style of multifunctional hybrid resources that mimic character.

Her investigate focuses on the engineered peptides and protein techniques as an integral ingredient of functional elements and equipment addressing medical systems and bioeconomy. Her team’s notable is effective include procedures produced for avoidance of oral health conditions, restoration of oral well being and for building sustainable and renewable solutions derived from biobased sources or developed as protein or enzyme mimics for multiple sectors.

Employing information mining, bioinformatics and — just lately — machine learning instruments combined with functionality associations, Tamerler’s crew has developed a amount of multifunctional biomaterial interfaces and surfaces and created biohybrid resources. Her work has led to biomaterials ranging from biomimetic tooth maintenance to antimicrobial peptides combating infection, to photopolymerizable peptide-polymer hybrids as subsequent era adhesives, as perfectly as self-assembled biobased catalyst techniques and sensing modalities.

“Dr. Tamerler has gathered an exemplary history of scholarship,” explained Kalpana Katti, a distinguished professor and science direct of Center for Mobile Biointerfaces in Science and Engineering at North Dakota Point out College, in nominating Tamerler for the award. Katti describes the operate as “along the strains of mimicking mother nature at the molecular scale,” coming up with peptides as “molecular synthesizers and assemblers in molecular setting up blocks,” then integrating them into structures with engineered qualities that provide sturdy makes use of in both know-how and drugs.

Tamerler has 9 patents, has been revealed far more than 150 situations in peer-reviewed publications and has been guide, co-guide or participant on exploration that has drawn extra $20 million from national and global funding businesses and industry. She is an elected Fellow of the American Institute of Health care and Organic Engineering (AIMBE), Fellow of the American Affiliation for the Development of Science (AAAS) and Fellow of the Turkish Academy of Science (TÜBA).

Tamerler lengthy has introduced an interdisciplinary method to her perform. In 2005, at Istanbul Technical University, she started and led the Molecular Biology-Biotechnology and Genetics Study Middle with users in engineering, arts and sciences, funded by European Union, condition and endowment.

She joined the faculty at the College of Washington and led research there prior to coming to KU in 2013. Tamerler now serves as associate vice chancellor for analysis at KU, immediately after obtaining served 3 yrs as the School of Engineering’s affiliate dean for study.