The department of Cell Biology-Inspired Tissue Engineering (cBITE) at the MERLN Institute for Technology-inspired Regenerative Medicine at Maastricht University in the Netherlands invites applications for a post-doctoral position. The post-doctoral researcher will perform cutting-edge research in computational modeling methods applied to regenerative medicine and more specifically, to cell-matrix interactions.
Regenerative medicine (RM) holds the promise to cure many of what are now chronic patients, restoring health rather than protracting decline, bettering the lives of millions and at the same time preventing lifelong, expensive care processes: cure instead of care. The scientific community has made large steps in this direction over the past decade, however our understanding of the fundamentals of cell, tissue and organ regeneration and of how to stimulate and guide this with intelligent biomaterials in the human body is still in its infancy. To date, the RM field has focused on studying cell-biomaterial interactions. Materials properties such as elasticity, topography, hydrophobicity, and porosity have all been shown to influence cell fate, and the introduction of high-throughput combinatorial approaches is expediting research and decoupling the properties to further inform the design of biomaterials. However, in order to improve the design of synthetic biomaterials, it is crucial to understand the physiological cell-ECM interactions and how these influence cell behavior. This research project aims to use in silico models to simulate cell-ECM interactions, improve our fundamental understanding thereof and use the obtained knowledge to design improved synthetic matrices.
Project description:
- Computational modeling of integrin signaling, cell-ECM interaction to inform the design of synthetic matrices;
- Parameter optimization and sensitivity analysis;
- Analysis and integration of various in vitro/in vivo data for model calibration.
What we offer:
- Computational ecosystem at Maastricht University: Institute for Data Science (IDS), Department of Knowledge Engineering (DKE) and Maastricht Centre for Systems Biology (MacsBio);
- Excellent computational and experimental facilities to validate the in silico analyses and predictions in vitro/in vivo;
- Interdisciplinary environment within MERLN and the “Materials-driven regeneration (MDR)-consortium”
Project embedding:
The project will be coordinated by the MERLN Institute for Technology-Inspired Regenerative Medicine (http://merln.maastrichtuniversity.nl/) as part of the “Materials-driven regeneration (MDR)-consortium” (see http://www.mdrresearch.nl/ for more information) which brings together an interdisciplinary team of excellent scientists at three leading institutes (ICMS at Eindhoven University of Technology, RMU at Utrecht University and MERLN at Maastricht University). The central goal of MDR’s research program is to investigate, design and use intelligent biomaterials that drive the functional regeneration of living tissues and organs under complex (patho)physiological conditions.
More information:
For more detailed information you can contact: dr. A. Carlier, email a.carlier@maastrichtuniversity.nl
