应机械结构强度与振动国家重点实验室, 国际应用力学中心的邀请，美国康奈尔大学机械与航空学院Jingjie YEO 博士来我校进行学术交流访问, 并就他在仿生智能材料的多尺度计算方面的最新研究进展做学术报告。
报告时间：2019年10月31日（星期三）上午10:00-11:00
地点: 教一楼南二层 第二会议室
学术报告题目：
Towards Multiscale Computational Design of Bio-inspired Smart Materials
Abstract: The rapid aging of the global human population is leading to a startling rise in noncommunicable diseases that are becoming more severe and burdensome for communities who can least afford treatments for these diseases. To dramatically improve the prevention and treatment of noncommunicable diseases, smart biomaterials must be developed at a low cost for drug delivery vehicles with specific targeting mechanisms, environmentally sensitive implants for tissue engineering, or dynamic health monitoring. Multiscale computational design of protein-based biomaterials can address this problem by rationally tailoring the biomaterials’ physical and chemical properties to achieve multifarious stimuli-responses. Three key bio-inspirations can be utilized for designing stimuli-responsive biomaterials: strong and lightweight silk from silkworms, structurally mutable elastin from the human skin, and reflectin and crystallin in squid’s chromatophores that help produce dynamic coloration. Multiscale molecular dynamics simulations, in combination with advanced sampling methods, can effectively and rapidly capture the structural transitions in silk and silk-elastin proteins that are subjected to solvent processing or high temperatures. Crosslinking silk-elastin proteins at high concentrations inhibits de-swelling by constraining their ability to remodel their structure. Homology modeling coupled with molecular docking simulations and the analysis of electrostatic properties unveil the importance of site-specific localization of reflectin and crystallin in the chromatophores of squid’s skin. Crystallin forms granules that serve as protective repositories for the pigment molecules for robust pigmentary coloration while reflectin confers iridescence, and this combination of mechanisms give squids their complex and adaptive coloration. These three bio-inspirations provide crucial design principles to guide the way towards truly rational computational design of multi-stimuli responsive biomaterials.
Biography
Before joining Cornell University in 2020, Prof. Jingjie Yeo was a research scientist in the Institute of High Performance Computing, Singapore. As a co-PI, he worked on developing cutting-edge, silk-based cosmeceuticals. He also collaborated closely with Procter & Gamble for molecular dynamics (MD) modeling of keratins and pigment cells. Prior, he was a postdoc at both Tufts University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he developed and performed numerous multiscale simulations with density functional theory (DFT) and fully-atomistic to coarse-grained MD modeling on a broad variety of biomaterials such as squid skin, silk and silk-elastin-like proteins, and graphene. He was a co-instructor in Station1, a social nonprofit organization dedicated to building the foundations of the university of the future through educational opportunity and socially-directed frontier STEM education, research, and internships. He received his Ph.D. and his B.Eng. degrees from Nanyang Technological University Singapore.
