Thanh Duc Nguyen
Departments of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering
University of Connecticut, CT, USA
Biography
Dr. Nguyen joined the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at UConn as an assistant professor since the beginning of 2016 after finishing his postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Robert Langer at MIT. His research is highly interdisciplinary and at the interface of biomedicine, materials and nano/micro technology. He has invented a platform technology which can create 3-dimensional microstructures of biodegradable polymers for applications in vaccine/drug delivery and medical implants. Recently, his research group at UConn has studied a special biodegradable piezoelectric polymer to develop implanted force-sensor and ultrasound transducer for monitoring vital intra-organ pressures and delivering medicines through the blood-brain barrier, respectively. All of these implanted sensors and transducers can self-vanish to avoid the need of invasive removal surgery. The biodegradable piezoelectric polymer can also be used as a tissue scaffold which can be remotely controlled to produce electrical stimulation for tissue regeneration. Dr. Nguyen’s work has been published in prestigious journals including Science, Nature Nanotech, PNAS etc. and highlighted in major media such as The New York Times, BBC News, the Guardian, NIH research matter etc. He received several awards including the ACell Young Investigator Award (2020), MIT top innovator under 35 for Asia Pacific (2019), NIH Trailblazer Award for Young and Early Investigators (2018), SPIE Rising Researcher Award (2019), Young Investigator Award in Biosciences and Bioengineering of Applied Sciences (2019), and the SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award (2018) etc.
