Levkin Research Group of Biofunctional Materials

2 million tons (yearly) of non-recyclable superabsorbers (diapers) may no longer end up in landfills or incinerators. We report a rapid UV-based recycling method for sodium polyacrylate hydrogels, accelerating the degradation time by 200x. No chemicals, just water and UV! The product of pampers degradation is soluble sodium polyacrylate with numerous applications - from eco-friendly dyes to pressure-sensitive adhesives. This simple new approach is fast, scalable, and green, promising a sustainable future for these polymers. Read the full article here.

Congratulations to Zhenwu, whose paper on “High-Performance Pressure Sensors based on Shaped Gel Droplet Arrays” has been accepted in Small! Great job! We wish you all the best in your new Postdoc position at Harvard.

Congratulations to Julius Höpfner! His paper "On-chip palladium-catalyzed synthesis of biphenyls in nanoscale" has been just accepted for publication in Small. Well done, Julius!

Biggest congratulations! 🥳🥳🥳 

Julius is a Master's student that recently joined us for his thesis. He is a Mechanical Engineer interested in tissue engineering and biofabrication. Hurray and welcome! :) 

Mariia's paper just got published in Macromolecular Materials and Engineering! :)

Here, Mariia and coauthor explore polymer structures with nano-, micro-, and macroporosity, fabricated via 3D printing, for lightweight materials with high mechanical durability. The relationship between pore size, density, and stiffness is investigated, highlighting the potential for further research on lattice architectures and other printing methods. 

Biggest congratulations! 🥳🥳🥳 Link to paper.

We recently created a Twitter account for our group - stay easily up to date by following us - click here!

Matthew Morben from Doane University just joined us as an intern for the Summer. Excited to have you with us :D 

Congratulations to Anna Popova, Haijun Cui and Sun Xueyuan, whose paper has been just accepted for publication in Advanced Healthcare Materials: "Repurposing FDA-Approved Drugs for Temozolomide-resistant IDH1 Mutant Glioma using High-Throughput Miniaturized Screening on Droplet Microarray Chip"!🥳🥳🥳

In this paper, several thousands of FDA approved drugs were screened with Glioma spheroids. This was a very successful collaboration with the group of Sevin Turcan from Heidelberg/DKFZ. The screen identified several novel compounds potent against glioma (brain tumor).

Link to paper :)

We are currently seeking a highly motivated and talented individual to join our team as a PhD student. The successful candidate will have a background in chemistry or materials science, with a keen interest in sensors, diagnostics, surface coating and chemical surface modification.

Read more under "Open Positions".

We present our comprehensive concept that considers assisted image annotation, algorithms for image processing of grid-like high-throughput experiments, and enhanced learning processes. Congratulations to Marcel and co-authors (incl. Razan,Joaquin, Anna, and Pavel)!

Link to the paper.

Our next paper about PEGgels - new type of functional gels. This time we managed to make PEGgel extremely tough, while showing shape-memory property and 3D printability. Polymerization of 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate in a mixture of PEG (good solvent) and PPG (bad solvent) leads to phase separation and increased toughness as well as shape-memory property.

Link to the paper.

Lutong Lu receently did his master thesis in our group - and he did excellent job! So, we are very pleased to now announce that he will continue as a PhD student. Looking forward to continuously having you as a part of the Levkin Research Group!

Our new group member Julián Serna’s proposal for a DAAD scholarship has just been accepted! Congratulations Julián,  very well deserved!

A new method for high-throughput purification of synthesized compounds using miniaturized liquid-liquid extraction on a chip has been developed to accelerate drug discovery by allowing synthesis and screening to be carried out on the same platform. Congratulations to Janne!

Link to the paper.

Our group wishes everyone Merry Christmas and a Happy New 2023 year! Let´s hope together that 2023 will be much better than 2022. We wish you a lot of health and a lot of peace in 2023.

Welcome to Dr. Saltuk Hanay (photo) who just joined our group. Saltuk is going to be a member of the Excellence Cluster 3D Matter Made to Order. Saltuk will work on a new translation project in collaboration with Prof. Eva Blasco.

Our paper titled “Droplet microarray based screening identifies proteins for maintaining pluripotency of hiPSCs” has been published in Advanced Healthcare Materials. Congratulations to Yanxi Liu, Anna Popova and our great collaborators Sarah Bertels, Markus Reischl, Ravindra Peravali and Martin Bastmeyer!

Welcome to Dr. Nikolaj Mandsberg who has joined our group! Nikolaj recently graduated from DTU, spent a year as a member of Joanna Aizenberg´s lab in Harvard and received the Carlsberg Foundation Internationalization Fellowship!