PhD Student Position in Wearable Optical Sensors for Wound Healing
Making a positive impact on society is what drives us. At Empa, around 1,100 employees from various disciplines work together to find innovative solutions for the challenges of the future.
Our research group focuses on developing intelligent materials that can be used as diagnostic tools or drug delivery systems to improve wound management. We are working on:
* Designing novel fluorescent-based detection methods for continuous monitoring of wound healing.
* Creating temporal and spatial controlled drug release systems using stimuli-responsive materials.
Project Background
Wound healing is a complex process involving multiple physiological events to restore injured skin to its full functionality. The presence of bacteria in the wound impairs the healing process, leading to chronic wounds and even sepsis. Due to inadequate wound management and the rise of multidrug-resistant strains, infected wounds pose a significant burden on global health, resulting in high costs due to prolonged hospitalization. Developing efficient treatments and improving wound management is essential.
In the Wound Booster initiative, we aim to design a precision, self-care integrated system to understand, simulate, and monitor skin wound evolution, ultimately treating and preventing chronic wounds. We will combine an in vitro analytical, omics-based platform with self-care wearables for spatiotemporal wound monitoring and patient-specific, timely wound treatment.
In this PhD project, you will develop sensors integrated into adaptive wound dressings. These sensors will combine optical sensing approaches to prevent signal interference and enable simultaneous assessment of multiple markers (multiplexing and multifunctionality). You will work closely with two other Empa PhD students: one focusing on optical sensing of bacterial loading and another on unbiased protein biomarker studies indicating wound status and informing the development of optical sensors. You will functionalize hydrogels with transducers and study their sensing properties under physiological conditions. Later, you will validate the sensors with real wound exudate from our clinical partners.
Your Profile
We seek a highly motivated candidate with a strong background in Chemistry or Materials Science. The ideal candidate should be able to work in a multidisciplinary environment, driven by scientific curiosity and open to learning new topics. Proficiency in spoken and written English is required, as well as a Master's degree. Previous experience in surface functionalization chemistries, spectrophotometric analysis, release kinetics analysis, and synthesis of hydrogels (nanocomposites) is desirable.
Our Offer
The PhD student will be affiliated at ETH Zurich and supervised by Dr. Luciano F. Boesel (Empa St. Gallen) and Dr. Mathias Bonmarin (ZHAW). The project duration is 3-4 years, starting upon mutual agreement. Candidates must address the project and mentioned points in their letter of motivation.