Prof Penny Martens, Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering

Prof PENNY MARTENS is currently the Deputy Dean of Graduate Research and a Professor in the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering at UNSW Australia in Sydney. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Colorado, USA in 2002. She then took up her academic position at UNSW in 2003. Her area of expertise is in polymer synthesis and characterisation, particularly the rational design of complex biomedical polymer systems. Specifically, she is focused on developing biosynthetic hydrogels for applications ranging from fundamental polymer design to cell encapsulation to conducting coatings for implants. She has worked on several approaches to covalently incorporating biological polymers into her poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) hydrogel systems, as well as various polymerisation methods.

Student Projects:

Development of new polymeric materials

Biosynthetic hydrogel microspheres for diabetes applications

Biosynthetic conducting hydrogels for neural applications

Looking for students for projects related to:

Polymer synthesis, fabrication, and characterisation.  Also open to other projects relating to this core area. Feel free to contact me to discuss your project ideas. 

Professional Organisations and Consulting positions

past President, Australasian Society for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering

Awards

Young Tall Poppy, 2009

Education

PhD/postgraduate

2002 - PhD from the University of Colorado in Chemical Engineering

2000 - MS from the University of Colorado in Chemical Engineering

Undergraduate

1997 - BS from Loras College in Engineering Physics