A decade of research yields new uses for ancient fibre

10 Aug '10

4 min read

"Based on the recent and rapid progression of silk materials from the ancient textile use into a host of new high-technology applications, we anticipate growth in the use of silks in a wide platform of applications will continue as answers to these remaining questions are obtained," say Omenetto and Kaplan.

Kaplan is chair of the Biomedical Engineering Department at Tufts School of Engineering and the Stern Family Professor in Engineering. He also directs the NIH Tissue Engineering Resource Center that involves Tufts and Columbia University. His work lies at the interface between biology and materials science and engineering, and he has been studying novel biomaterials, many of them silk-based, for 30 years. Professor of Biomedical Engineering Fiorenzo Omenetto is a frequent collaborator with Kaplan who has pioneered silk optics and use of silk as a green material for photonics and other high tech applications.

Support for this research on silk comes from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Science Research and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Tufts University, located on three Massachusetts campuses in Boston, Medford/Somerville, and Grafton, and in Talloires, France, is recognized among the premier research universities in the United States. Tufts enjoys a global reputation for academic excellence and for the preparation of students as leaders in a wide range of professions. A growing number of innovative teaching and research initiatives span all Tufts campuses, and collaboration among the faculty and students in the undergraduate, graduate and professional programs across the university's schools is widely encouraged.

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