Functional and stimuli-responsive polymer surfaces

We are a young research group at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and at the University of Heidelberg that uses organic chemistry, polymer chemistry, cell biology and microbiology approaches to develop innovative research tools and to answer important biological questions.

The goal of our research is to gain better understanding of biological interfaces and to advance our ability to effectively control and direct behavior of eukaryotic cells and bacteria. We are developing biologically active functional polymer surfaces and materials, "smart" switchable polymer surfaces, and gradient surfaces, which we use for investigation of biointerfaces, for studying cell- or bacteria-surface interactions, for studying biofouling and for creating "smart" culture devices. Our motivation is to create polymer films and coatings that will improve performance of existing biomedical devices, implants and cell culture dishes. Our research is very interdisciplinary and we closely collaborate with biologists, microbiologists and physicists.

NEWS:

30/05/2011

Results of Florian’s and Erica’s work are accepted to Angewandte Chemie

20/05/2011

Results of David’s work are published in Advanced Materials http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201101203/abstract  

09/12/2010

Results of Florian´s research work lead to receiving the Helmholtz-Enterprise grant for opening a start-up company. More information can be found at the Helmholtz Association website  or at the KIT website .

29/12/2010

EU patent application based on Florian´s results is submitted with the help of the KIT and the Müller-Boré & Partner  law firm.

01/12/2010

Victoria Nedashkivska joined the group

01/11/2010

Erica Ueda joined the group

01/09/2010

Junsheng Li joined the group

01/08/2010

Alexander Efremov has joined the group

01/06/2010

Linxian Li joined the group

22/09/2009

Die Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft fördert fünf neue Nachwuchsgruppen am KIT . Damit können fünf herausragende junge Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler in Karlsruhe ihre eigenen Forschungsgruppen aufbauen und leiten. Jede Nachwuchsgruppenleitungsstelle ist mit einem Jahresbudget von mindestens 250.000 Euro über fünf Jahre und der Option auf eine unbefristete Anstellung verbunden.

Am Institut für Toxikologie und Genetik (ITG) des KIT widmet sich die Gruppe "Functional and Stimuli-Responsive Polymer Surfaces" von Dr. Pavel Levkin gemeinsam mit Forschern der Universität Heidelberg der Synthese neuartiger Materialien auf Polymer-Basis mit bestimmten Eigenschaften, was Morphologie, Oberflächenchemie und Elastizität betrifft, und untersucht das Verhalten von Zellen und bakteriellen Biofilmen auf der Oberfläche solcher Materialien.

_{Updated: May 30, 2011}