IMX Talks - When Nature meets Nanotechnology: Development of novel materials using renewable resources

The development of new materials from renewable resources represents a win-win for humanity, allowing us to create useful products while also addressing critical ecological and environmental challenges. Proteins are particularly promising building blocks for this purpose. From a material science perspective, they offer immense potential for developing novel structures, composites, and other advanced materials. In this talk, I will present our research on the use of proteins and marine biomass to create a wide range of new materials. I'll discuss our bottom-up technologies and demonstrate how we have applied them to develop materials for various applications, including the controlled green syntheses of various nanoparticles and metallic structures, Light-emitting devices, Photothermal materials, Smart Wound dressings, Antibacterial coatings, and more. I will also highlight the significant role that Jellyfish have played as a renewable resource in many of these applications and the unique collaboration of our group with the Israel Electric Corporation, aiming to collect Jellyfish which is clogging the cooling turbines of the electrical power stations.

Bio: Prof. Shachar Richter is a faculty member in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Tel Aviv University, Israel, and the head of the department. He earned his PhD in Materials Science and Chemical Physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. After graduation, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship and was later appointed an independent staff member (MTS) at Bell Laboratories and Agere Systems in New Jersey, USA.
In 2001, he joined the School of Chemistry at Tel Aviv University, and in 2013, he moved to the newly established Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He was a visiting professor at Monash University in Australia in 2017 and a distinguished visiting scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).  His diverse research area focuses in developing innovative materials from renewable resources, such as jellyfish-based composites for medical and cosmetic uses, as well as working in molecular and bioelectronics, bio-nanocomposites, and new patterning technologies.
Professor Richter has held several public roles, including serving as department head, chair of the "Advanced Materials" Cathedra, leading the MSc program in Materials Science and Engineering at Tel Aviv University, acting as President of the Israel Vacuum Society (IVS), and chairing the chemistry committee of the Standards Institute of Israel. He also serves on the editorial boards of various journals. Some of his patents have been licensed and are in the process of being commercialized, and he has co-founded two startups.