PhD studentship -George Bethell Scholarship: Development of a holographic 3D printing system to produce sustainable cultured meat

Updated: over 2 years ago
Location: Nottingham, SCOTLAND
Deadline: 18 Aug 2021

Reference
ENG1497
Closing Date
Wednesday, 18th August 2021
Department
Engineering

 Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD studentship (3 years) within the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Nottingham. The student will work with an interdisciplinary supervisory team with expertise in Biofabrication, 3D printing, materials chemistry and flow.

 Project title: Development of a holographic 3D printing system to produce sustainable cultured meat

Supervisory Team: Laura Ruiz-Cantu, Yinfeng He and Ricky Wildman

In this project, we seek to apply the holographic 3D printing (3DP) technology for the development of a continuous cultured meat production line. 3DP has been recognized for its unprecedented capacity to fabricate intricate scaffold structures that promotes tissue reconstruction (e.g. skeletal muscles) in 3D. This technology can also be a handy tool for cultured meat production which relies on in vitro cell culture. Existing efforts mainly focus on extrusion-based 3DP which can be used for small-scale trials but not cost-efficient for large scale production due to its point-based printing strategy. The recent volumetric 3D printing technology broke this production speed limit by offering a computed axial lithography system (holographic) that can directly form a 3D scaffold structure in less than 50 seconds. This project will look into the development of a continuous production system that combines volumetric 3DP and tissue engineering to fabricate sustainable meat. A muscle and fat cells containing scaffold will be fabricated using volumetric 3DP. The formed structure will then enter a culturing chamber were all the nutrients will be provided to allow the cells to grow and construct the meat tissue. Once it is matured, the cultured meat will be ‘harvested’. The food-safe substrate/material for the scaffold, optimum culturing time, culturing conditions and scalability will be studied in this project. 

The ideal candidate will have the background in biology, materials science, materials engineering or related subjects and be interested in bioprinting, polymer chemistry and 3D printing. The studentship is an exciting research collaboration between supervisors based within the Centre for Additive Manufacturing (https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cfam ) and the Additive biofabrication lab. The student will have access to equipment and expertise at the forefront of the 3D printing and biofabrication research areas.

 Eligibility

•    Due to funding restrictions, the position is only available for home/UK candidates

•    Candidates must possess or expect to obtain, a 2:1 or first class degree in an Engineering or Biology related discipline. 

•    Candidates will be available to start on 1st October 2021 

How to apply

Please send a copy of your covering letter, CV and academic transcripts to [email protected] referring to the project title.  

Closing date: applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis until a suitable candidate is appointed.



Similar Positions