Biomedical Materials

MSN 512 sits at the interface of materials science and biology, asking how synthetic and biologically-derived materials behave once they meet living tissue — what makes something biocompatible, how surfaces are engineered to interact with cells, and why a polymer that works in a beaker can still fail inside a body. You'll move through lectures and case studies on biomaterial chemistry, self-assembly, tissue scaffolds, biosensors, and drug-delivery systems, with a midterm, a final, and a presented project where you dig into a recent paper or design problem yourself. It's a graduate elective that assumes you already have the materials and chemistry fundamentals, and it's the lens through which a lot of contemporary device, diagnostic, and therapeutic research is actually built.