Caitlin Howell

Abstract:

Over millions of years, nature has developed elegant solutions to a wide variety of challenges. Thanks in part to recent advances in materials science, we are now at a point where we can replicate and even improve upon these solutions, using them to solve human problems. Ongoing work in the Howell group at the University of Maine has been dedicated to designing bio-inspired solutions to issues associated with controlling the interactions of biological systems with abiotic surfaces. In one application, liquid-infused surfaces inspired Nepenthes pitcher plant can be used to resist adhesion by bacteria on medical devices such as urinary catheters. A similar liquid-coating strategy can be used to reduce fouling and blockage of water purification membranes and even assist in the capture and analysis of airborne pathogens. Bio-inspired liquid surfaces can also be made on paper, a sustainable resource and staple industry of Maine, permitting a new approach to liquid sample handling that use origami folds to create functionality. Finally, Maine industrial paper-making technology can be used mass-produce surface structures that make biological system-handling approaches such as microfluidics commercially viable. The use of bio-inspired strategies to solve human problems—particularly those of biological interactions with surfaces—is a new and growing area of investigation with significant potential for creative innovation across the fields of industry and medicine.

Short bio:

Caitlin Howell is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Maine. She earned her PhD in Physical Chemistry from Heidelberg University, Germany, studying the organization and orientation of biological molecules and cells at abiotic surfaces using spectroscopic techniques. She then completed a postdoc as a Technology Development Fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University where she designed and tested bio-inspired surfaces for use in industry and medicine and worked toward moving those technologies to market. Her current research focus is on the development of new surface-based strategies for controlling biological systems at interfaces.