Dr. David Kisailus
University of California, Irvine
Seminar Information
EBU2, Room 479
There is a dire need for the development of advanced materials for a broad range of applications in energy, defense, homeland security, industrial safety, medicine, and transportation sectors. Although the past few centuries have witnessed the development of incredible engineering feats, Nature has been conducting its own experiments for hundreds of millions of years. Natural systems have evolved efficient strategies, exemplified in the biological tissues of numerous animal and plant species, to synthesize and construct materials from a limited selection of available starting elements that often exhibit exceptional properties that are similar, and frequently superior to, those exhibited by many engineering materials. These biological systems have accomplished this feat by establishing controlled synthesis and hierarchical assembly of nano- to micro-scaled building blocks that are integrated into macroscale structures. However, Nature goes one step further, often producing materials with that display multi-functionality in order to provide organisms with a unique ecological advantage to ensure survival. Here, we investigate a variety of organisms, including crustaceans that smash their prey faster than a bullet, soft robotic-like organisms with magnetic teeth that chew on rock, and insects that can be run over with a car and survive. We not only discuss these superstructures that have been derived over hundreds of millions of years, but we demonstrate how we have translated this towards the development of cost-effective and environmentally friendly multifunctional engineering materials for use in aerospace, automotive, defense, energy and environmental applications.
David Kisailus is the Henry Samueli Faculty Excellence Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Professor Kisailus, a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and Member of UNESCO Chair in Materials and Technologies for Energy Conversion, Saving and Storage (MATECSS), received his Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara (2002), M.S. from the University of Florida in Materials Science and B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Drexel University. After his Ph.D., Prof. Kisailus was appointed as a postdoctoral researcher in the Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies, University of California at Santa Barbara. Following this, he was a Research Scientist at HRL Laboratories and then joined as faculty at the University of California. Professor Kisailus is currently the PI of the Biomimetics and Nanostructured Materials Group and the Director of a Multi-University Research Initiative on Convergent Evolution to Engineering Materials with UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, Purdue and Northwestern Universities. His group’s research focuses on investigating synthesis – structure - property relationships in biological materials and their translation to biomimetics, and on developing solution-based processes to synthesize nanoscale materials for energy and environmental-based applications. Professor Kisailus has published more than 150 papers in journals such as Science, Nature, ACS Nano, Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, Crystal Growth & Design, Langmuir, Materials Today, PNAS, JACS. He has also been granted 14 patents (with more than 20 pending). His research is highlighted in high profile media including Nature, NY Times, LA Times, National Geographic, Discovery Channel and BBC.