Doctoral thesis success: Tobias Zehnder
On 28th July 2017 Tobias Zehnder successfully defended his doctoral thesis in the field of biofabrication of bone tissue scaffolds using alginate based hydrogels, which was carried out under the supervision of Professor Aldo R. Boccaccini at the Institute of Biomaterials. In addition to Prof. Boccaccini, Prof. Juergen Stampfl (TU Vienna), Prof. Carolin Koerner (Chair of Materials Science and Engineering for Metals, FAU), and Prof. Bernhard Hensel (Max Schaldach-endowed Professorship for Biomedical Technology, FAU), were the members of the doctoral defense committee (pictured with T. Zehnder). Prof. Boccaccini highlighted Tobias’ great contribution to the establishment of the biofabrication facilities in our laboratory, noting that his doctoral thesis is in fact the first comprehensive research effort in our Institute focused on biofabrication of cell loaded scaffolds, which involved the optimisation of the bio-ink, based on the alginate-gelatin system, and the establishment of the bioprinting process parameters. This is reflected in the fact that most of our biofabrication related papers include T. Zehnder as one of the co-authors. Publications resulting from Tobias’ doctoral thesis include also two papers in the high IF journal Biofabrication [1-2]. We congratulate Tobias on achieving his doctoral degree and wish him all the best in his future career.
[1] T. Zehnder, et al., Evaluation of an alginate-gelatine crosslinked hydrogel for bioplotting, Biofabrication 7 ( 2015): 025001.
[2] T. Zehnder, et al., Biofabrication of a co-culture system in an osteoid-like hydrogel matrix, Biofabrication 9 (2017): 025016.
