Natural Biopolymers in Drug Delivery and Tissue Engineering

Professor, Polymeric Biomaterials Lab, School of Nanosciences and Molecular Medicine, Polymeric Biomaterials Lab, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Kochi-682041, India. Prof. Jayakumar Rangasamy's research laboratory is mainly interested in the development of biopolymeric nanofibers, nanogels, nanoparticles, nanocomposite scaffolds and injectable hydrogels for Drug Delivery, Hemostasis, Infectious Diseases, Tissue Engineering, Regenerative Medicine and Wound Healing applications. He received his Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry from Anna University, Chennai, India (2002). He was awarded the University Postdoctoral Fellowship from Chonbuk National University (2002-2003), South Korea. In Portugal, he was awarded FCT Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Government of Portugal (2003-2005). In addition, he was also awarded the prestigious JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship (2005-2007) from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Japan. He has published 265 articles in SCI Journals, edited 7 books, 12 book chapters and 12 patents to his credit. He is also reviewer and editorial board member of many international journals. His publications have been cited more than 23000 times with h-index-80. He has received the “Best Paper Award” from Journal of Materials Science Materials in Medicine (Springer) and IET Nanobiotechnology Journal. He received “Faculty Researcher Award-2016” from Indian Chitin and Chitosan Society and “MRSI Medal-2017” from Materials Research Society of India (MRSI). He also received “India Research Excellence-Citation Awards 2017 (Health & Medical Science area)” from Clarivate Analytics, Web of Science. He was selected as a “World Top 2% Scientists from India” in “Polymers” field by Stanford University, USA in the year of 2020 & 2021. He recently received “Chancellor’s Research Excellence Award-2021” from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (University), India. He has also been listed in the “Top 10 Material Science Researchers from India”. Clinical Research Project Manager, MicroPort Orthopedics Inc.,Arlington, Tennessee, USA Dr. Vishnu Priya Murali has extensive research experience in the field of biomedical engineering, exploring a number of polymers, ceramics and metals for regenerative medicine. Her work has driven improvements in the fabrication and characterization of polymer-based hydrogels, nanogels and nanoparticles for bone tissue engineering, development, and characterization of polymeric scaffolds for drug delivery, and the fabrication of nanoparticle-loaded polymeric surface coatings for gene delivery. She is currently involved in translational research where she develops strategies and monitors research progress of ceramic and metallic orthopedic products that are ready to be commercialized. She has a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Memphis, USA (2019), where she received the 2019 Steven Slack Fellowship and Herff College of Engineering Felllowship (2015-2019). She did her PostDoctoral training at Florida State University, USA (2019-2021) and was selected for the AAAS/Science Program for Excellence in Science, 2019. She has published 10 peer-reviewed journal articles in prestigious journals like Acta Biomaterialia and Carbohydrate Polymers and 3 book chapters for Wiley, Springer and Woodhead Publishing. She has around 650 citations and a i10 Index and h-index of 9, each. She has been invited as a guest speaker in multiple international forums and is a reviewer for several international journals of Elsevier, MDPI and Springer.