The 3^rd Annual Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (TERMIS) World Congress took place from 5-8 September in Vienna, Austria. Attracting over 2000 attendees, the congress has once again featured a strong display of field-leading research conducted by researchers at the Network of Excellence for Functional Biomaterials (NFB), NUI Galway.

NFB featured prominently at the 2012 congress where it was represented by 11 researchers. Over ten podium presentations and eight poster presentations by NFB were made over the four-day World Congress. The congress was also attended by two of NFB’s principal investigators, Dr Wenxin Wang and Dr Dimitrios Zeugolis both of whom chaired a poster presentation session and symposia entitled “Gene Transfer Approaches in Tissue Engineering”, and “Tissue Engineering of Functional Tendons and Ligaments”.

The travelling researchers were accompanied by NFB director, Professor Abhay Pandit who, in addition to chairing a number of sessions, was invited to deliver a keynote address. Speaking in the morning session of the final day of the congress, Professor Pandit’s lecture, entitled “Bridging the spinal cord – a step towards functionalisation”, drew on ongoing, cutting edge research into the repair of spinal cord injuries being carried out in the NFB.

Two of this year’s presenting researchers, Andrew English and Dr Mangesh Kulkarni, travelled to Vienna on grants awarded by the TERMIS Student and Young Investigator Section (SYIS). TERMIS SYIS seeks to promote the scientific and professional development of promising young researchers in the tissue engineering and regenerative medicine field. In addition to his travel award, Andrew English was selected by an international review board, along with four of his peers from across the globe, as a finalist in the TERMIS SYIS Young Investigators’ competition. His presentation, entitled “Preferential Tenocyte Response to Anisotropic Topography and Implications on Medical Device Design”, was judged by a committee selected from leading experts in the field. Andrew was awarded the second place in this prestigious World Congress.

NFB, which was established with funding from Science Foundation Ireland under the Strategic Research Cluster Programme, conducts research on biomaterials, developing technologies for use in clinical applications in the fields of orthopaedics, soft-tissue healing and neural and cardiovascular regeneration.

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