K艒nane Bay earned a Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2020.
The next generation of polymeric materials will need features typically associated with biological systems, such as programmable, self-healing, and self-regenerating properties. While engineering synthetic materials with such capabilities remains a grand challenge, these properties are inherent to biofilm-forming bacteria, which use internal material factories to produce polymeric matrices with highly precise and complex structures and mechanical properties. As such, our group, the Huli Materials Lab, leverages microorganisms to fabricate engineered living materials.
The Huli Materials Lab develops characterization and processing methods to quantify and program the properties of living polymeric materials to enable functionalities desired for applications in biotechnology, sensing, and protection. Research areas in the Huli Materials Lab include: (1) extreme mechanics of biofilms, (2) spatially programming the stimuli-responsive behaviors of living polymeric composites, and (3) engineering the mechanical properties of听biohybrid hydrogels.