Sustainable Biopolymers and Composites for Biomedical Applications

Professor Maurice N. Collins is a Materials Scientist and Principal Investigator (PI) in the School of Engineering at the University of Limerick. He is a member of the Bernal Institute, the Health Research Institute and FI at AMBER. He has successfully led the H2020 funded LIBRE consortium (lignin for carbon fiber), the largest consortium in biobased carbon fibre research in Europe as well as being PI on multiple national funded projects. He is currently scientific and dissemination manager of the Horizon Europe funded VIBES consortium. His expertise is in biopolymer science which includes Tissue Engineering/Regenerative medicine, hydrogels and biobased carbon fibre precursor materials as well as the development of 3D printable (bio)polymers. He works on the cascading principle - whereby higher value applications are preferentially derived from biological resources, through the utilisation of waste bioresources from forestry to produce advanced engineering materials^ 40 international Journals. He is editor of the Elsevier published International Journal of Biological Macromolecules and sits on the editorial board of Carbohydrate Polymers, Heliyon, soldering and surface mount tech. He is proposal assessor for the Polish Academy of Science, Israeli Ministry of Science H2020 and Horizon ^6k citations with a h -index of 46.

Mario Culebras, PhD in Chemistry obtained at the University of Valencia (2017). Mario Culebras currently works as lecturer in the physical chemistry department at the University of Valencia. He is also part of the Institute of Material Science at the University of Valencia where he is doing research focused on the recovery of biomass residues to produce advanced nanomaterials, publishing more than 60 articles in peer-reviewed journals, 8 patents, 4 book chapters and presenting more than 43 papers at renowned international conferences. In addition, he works on several national and international research projects, being the principal investigator of several of them.