Keynote Speakers

Svetan Ratchev
Marc Madou
Makoto Nakamura

Evolvable Precision Assembly Systems - Towards Open, Adaptable and Context-Aware Manufacturing

Svetan Ratchev
Nottingham University, England
Monday, 08:30-09:30, Campus Center, CC Executive Dining Room

Biography: Svetan Ratchev is a Professor in Manufacturing Engineering, Director of the Institute for Advanced Manufacturing and Director of the Nottingham Centre for Aerospace Manufacturing and the Nottingham Precision Manufacturing Centre. He researches and consults in key areas of precision manufacture including assembly automation, precision machining and distributed design and manufacture. Svetan is a Fellow of IMechE, member of the IFAC technical committees TC5.1 and TC5.2 and the founding chair of the International Precision Assembly Seminar IPAS. Svetan is the principal investigator of the EPSRC Cloud Manufacturing and Evolvable Assembly Systems research programmes, director of the EPSRC Manufacturing Technology Industrial Engineering Doctoral Centre and principal investigator and coordinator of the EU FP7 project PRIME - “Plug and Produce Intelligent Multi Agent Environment based on Standard Technology”.

Abstract: The concept of co-evolution of products, processes and production systems in response to evolving external drivers such as new materials, technologies, services, and communications has been a subject of debate. Recent works have identified adaptability, changeability, self-resilience, self-improvement and co-creation as key facets of future responsive and flexible production systems. Despite achievements to date, the fundamental challenges remain and new theoretical foundations are needed for next generation precision manufacturing systems that can self-build and evolve as a function of changing complex networks of product requirements, processes and environment interactions in a predictable, measured and responsive way. To achieve such open emergent behaviour, manufacturing systems require new levels of context-awareness, standardized ’plug and produce‘ configuration methods, equipment module design and new multi-stage/multi-scale algorithmic capabilities and interfaces capable of delivering this new behaviour. The keynote will report on two current strategic programmes funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council in Cloud Manufacturing and Evolvable Assembly Systems based on a multidisciplinary research approach predicated on an innovative intertwining of several foundational research challenges in complex adaptive systems, cloud technologies, product-process-system evolution, data analytics, knowledge modelling, emergence engineering, and open manufacturing.

Electromechanical Spinning (EMS) a New Nanomanufacturing Option

Marc Madou
University of California, USA
Monday, 13:00-14:00, Campus Center, CC Executive Dining Room

Biography: Before joining UCI as the Chancellor’s Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MEA), Dr. Madou was Vice President of Advanced Technology at Nanogen in San Diego, California. He specializes in the application of miniaturization technology to chemical and biological problems (BIO-MEMS). He is the author of several books in this burgeoning field he helped pioneer both in Academia and in Industry. He founded several micromachining companies and has been on the board of many more.

Many of his colleagues became well know in their own right in academia and through successful MEMS start-ups. Madou was the founder of the SRI International’s Microsensor Department, founder and President of Teknekron Sensor Development Corporation (TSDC), Visiting Miller Professor at UC Berkeley and Endowed Chair at the Ohio State University (Professor in Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering). The third edition of “Fundamentals of Microfabrication,” an introduction to MEMS and NEMS, which has become known as the “bible” of micromachining, was published in July of last year
(http://fundamentalsofmicrofabrication.wordpress.com/).
Dr. Madou currently leads UCI’s efforts in Advanced Manufacturing and in Educational Outreach in Advanced Manufacturing.

Some of Dr. Madou’s recent research work involves artificial muscle for responsive drug delivery, a compact disc-based fluidic platform and carbon MEMS, the two latter fields were pioneered by Dr. Madou. To find out more about those recent research projects, visit www.biomems.net. At UCI Dr. Madou works on carbon-MEMS, a CD based fluidic platform, artificial muscle for responsive drug delivery and integrating fluidics with DNA arrays as well as researching label–free assays for the Molecular Diagnostics platform of the future.

Abstract: Fabrication of functional polymeric nanofibers has attracted considerable attention from researchers in academia and industry due to a wide variety of applications of such fibers in the fields of sensors and actuators, energy storage, smart textiles, optoelectronics, tissue engineering, prosthetics, drug delivery, micro resonators, and piezoelectric energy generators. However, widespread success of these applications is impeded by the limited capabilities of presently available fabrication techniques to accurately control the physical properties and positioning (patterning) of the nanofibers in a reliable and economical way. Techniques analogous to Electron-Beam Lithography (EBL) and Dip-Pen Lithography do allow controlled writing of nanofibers but face stiff economical or technical challenges in scale-up. Electrospinning on the other hand has emerged as a successful method to fabricate various types of polymeric nanofibers on a large scale. This technique, also known as Far-Field Electrospinning (FFES), involves the application of a high voltage (10-15kV) to bias a polymer solution in a syringe against a grounded substrate with the syringe tip separated from the substrate by a distance of 10 to 15cm. The grounded substrate then electrostatically pulls onto the droplet at the tip of the syringe to induce flow of charge in the form of a polymeric jet that undergoes stretching and whipping motion in situ by the electric field leading to the generation of nanofibers that land onto the substrate. However, FFES is hard to control due to the electric instabilities that are inherent in the electrospinning process. Although the alignment of nanofibers along a preferred direction has been accomplished through the use of a rotating drum collector, and by using electrical field manipulation, precise 2D and 3D patterning is still very difficult to achieve. Generally speaking, current state-of-the-art fabrication methods for polymeric nanofibers fail to deliver precise, inexpensive, fast and continuous patterning capability.

Biofabrication: Challenging on 3D Fabrication with Biological Living Materials

Makoto Nakamura
University of Toyama, Japan
Tuesday, 08:30-09:30, Campus Center, CC Executive Dining Room

Biography: Dr. Makoto Nakamura graduated from the department of medicine, Kobe University in 1986. After obtaining the license of a medical doctor, he developed his clinical skills in Kanazawa University and worked as a clinical pediatrician for 10 years. He specialized in pediatric cardiology.

After receiving his Ph.D. degree from Kanazawa University, he started research on artificial heart. In 1996, he moved to the National Cardiovascular Center of Japan. In 1999, he was appointed as associate professor at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University. During these studies, he learned about the limitations of mechanical artificial organs, and he started his researches on tissue engineering. He focused on an innovative approach by applying printing technology, which is now called Bioprinting. He developed an inkjet 3D-bioprinter supported by the Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology (KAST: by Kanagawa prefecture, Japan) from 2005 to 2008. He became a professor of the University of Toyama after this project. He is now pursuing the creation of advanced technologies for 3D tissue engineering or organ engineering.

He has contributed to the progress of the research on Bioprinting and biofabrication. He has contributed to the establishment of the international society for biofabrication (ISBF) as an inaugural board member. And, he has organized several international symposia, such as the 3rd International Symposium on Bioprinting & Biofabrication in Kawasaki, Japan in 2006, Bioprinting & Biofabrication in Bordeaux (3B’s) in 2009, Biofabrication 2011 in Toyama (the 2nd annual conference of ISBF in 2011) in Japan, and the International Bioprinting Congress in Singapore in 2014, as an organizer or co-chair.

In 2013, he became the head of the Department of Life Science and Bioengineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Toyama and now manages the education and research activities of the department.

Research Interests: Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (Development of Bioprinting and Biofabrication, and Computer aided tissue engineering; Application of Bio-artificial tissues and organs), Bio-medical engineering (Application of engineering to bio-medical and pharmaceutical field).

Abstract: Tissue engineering has been developed in order to provide useful biological tissues for medical therapies or biomedical researches. Biological tissues are composed of multi-scaled components from living cells and proteins, to small tissues such as capillary vessels, to larger tissues and finally organs. It is one of the biggest issues to construct such complicated 3D biological structures by engineering approach. The research field, which is focusing specially on pursuing the effective technologies to produce such complicated tissues, has emerged. It is called “Biofabrication”. In Biofabrication, many processes are required, where many inexperienced technologies, tools and manufacturing machines are needed, respectively. Application of micro-manufacturing and MEMS technologies are indeed promising, however, cells are living and fragile and wet materials. In addition, all of the biological materials must be treated and maintained all through biocompatible processes under the biocompatible environment.

In this presentation, the developments of biofabrication will be introduced, and the fusion of bio- and micro-fabrication will be discussed.