Research Spotlights

Past IMI-NFG Research Exchange (RE) Participants

Mohammed Ammar:
I am a dentist in Alexandria, Egypt working on tissue engineering . The focus of my research is on biomaterials particularly bioactive glasses to restore lost and diseased bone. I had the opportunity through the International Materials Institute for New Functionality in Glass to spend about 5 months in Lehigh University on a project titled "Development of Tissue Engineering Scaffold Utilizing Bioactive Glass having Nano-to Meso scale 3/D porosity". It is a joint collaborationbetween my home institution, Faculty of Dentistry at Alexandria University, Lehigh University, Princeton University and theUniversity of Lisbon, Portugal. Through this exchange grant, I have learned so many things which certainly enhanced my knowldege on biomaterials.

During my stay, I also learned about the synthesis of a new type of a bioactive glass by the sol-gel technique from an expert in this field ( Dr. Ana Marques from Portugal ) and some of the characterization techniques. I also had the chance to prepare the bioactive glass by myself and do some experiments to evaluate its bioactivity and enhance its structure which were possible because of available facilities in Lehigh University but not readily available in my institute back in Egypt.

Further, the interaction with other research teams in Lehigh and Princeton facilitated a lot in exchanging our knowledge through our different backgrounds and helped us to configure our needs to reach our goal. Indeed, it was a great opportunity for me to be in a different culture and working environment which made it a very wonderful experience for me.

Photo shown from left to right:
Dr. Ana C. Marques, Dr. Mohamed Ammar and Dr. Hassan Moawad working on bone-scaffolding project in Lehigh University.