Biomaterials for fun and profit: from curiosity-driven research to artificial tissue scaffolds

Artificial tissue offers many advantages over grafts or implants of natural tissue in treating a variety of pathologies. Designing and creating artificial tissue, however, also presents many challenges, both practical and fundamental. I will present some general strategies that we apply in creating biomaterials for tissue scaffold applications, along with some recent results. I will also highlight some of the fundamental, curiosity-driven research which makes the applied work possible.