Injury to ligaments can require surgery to repair or reconstruct the tissue due to unique anatomy and location of ligament within the body. Current repair methods often do not provide the adequate mechanical strength required. My research will involve the culturing of several different cell lines including primary fibroblasts and a commercial line of fibroblasts on a collagen hydrogel. During culture, the cells will be subjected to mechanical strain and the effects will be monitored. The biomechanical properties of the tissue engineered ligament will be further investigated through the use of varying strain regimes. 

I am currently working with a multidisciplinary team in Neuro-Photonics Lab in University of Nottingham. The research group is aimed to understand fundamental aspects of information processing in the brain. We are now working on an interactive real-time feedback system that allows information transfer between cultured neuronal network and virtual environment that responds to cell activity and returns stimulation. My project is mainly to develop an advanced microfluidics control  system. This system is implemented as an integral part of the entire system to build and maintain a constant and controlled physicochemical environment that simulates the cell in vivo environment homeostatically. The main function of the microfluidic control system is to precisely deliver cell culture media and soluble drugs  in a PDMS based microfulidic device due to different requirements. The system contains both an integrated manifold and a software development Interface. Microprocessor plays an important role in the project while different control methods such as classic PID control, fuzzy control and model predictive control are applied to reach different challenging control tasks. 

Safety engineering to prevent or mitigate against head injuries is largely based upon injury criteria or computational modelling that are specific to young adult heads and brains.  This has proved extremely successful for relevant applications such as seatbelt and airbag design and motorcycle helmet construction.  However, differences in brain mass and volume and tissue strengths greatly reduce the usefulness of such models when applied to current issues such as falls in the elderly and intraventricular haemorrhage in premature babies. 

The project will develop models that are specific to such vulnerable populations based on appropriate geometries and tissue properties with a view to their application to such interventions as the design and specification of hospital and care home flooring and neonatal transport restraint systems.