I have been conducting research into animate materials for 15 years. This involves understanding how living organisms achieve material animacy including self-organisation and self-repair. Recently I focused on translating this knowledge into creating animate materials.
Some of my recent research papers from this activity are listed below.
I co-chaired a Royal Society report on Animate Materials the publication can be found here.
Animate Materials
Oldfrey, B., Tchorzewska, A., Jackson, R., Croysdale, M., Loureiro, R., Holloway, C., & Miodownik, M. (2021). Additive manufacturing techniques for smart prosthetic liners. Medical Engineering & Physics, 87, 45-55. doi:10.1016/j.medengphy.2020.11.006
Jackson, R. J., Patrick, P. S., & Miodownik, M. (2020). Functionally graded 3D printed asphalt composites. Materials Letters: X, 7, 100047. doi:10.1016/j.mlblux.2020.100047
Lawrence Yolland, Mubarik Burki, Stefania Marcotti, Andrei Luchici, Fiona N. Kenny, John Robert Davis, Eduardo Serna-Morales, Jan Müller, Michael Sixt, Andrew Davidson, Will Wood, Linus J. Schumacher, Robert G. Endres, Mark Miodownik & Brian M. Stramer, Persistent and polarized global actin flow is essential for directionality during cell migration, Nature Cell Biology (2019)
Nargess Khalilgharibi, Jonathan Fouchard, Nina Asadipour, Ricardo Barrientos, Maria Duda, Alessandra Bonfanti, Amina Yonis, Andrew Harris, Payman Mosaffa, Yasuyuki Fujita, Alexandre Kabla, Yanlan Mao, Buzz Baum, José J Muñoz, Mark Miodownik & Guillaume Charras, Stress relaxation in epithelial monolayers is controlled by the actomyosin cortex, Nature Physics (2019)
Ben Oldfrey, Richard Jackson, Peter Smitham and Mark Miodownik, A Deep Learning Approach to Non-linearity in Wearable Stretch Sensors, Front. Robot. AI, 08 May 2019
Richard Jackson, Adam Wojcik, Mark Miodownik, 3D printing of asphalt and its effect on mechanical properties.Materials & Design Volume 160, 15 December (2018), Pages 468-474.
Mark Ransley, Peter Smitham and Mark Miodownik, Active chainmail fabrics for soft robotic applications, Smart Materials and Structures (2017) DOI: 10.1088/1361-665X/aa7221
John R. Davis, Andrei Luchici, Fuad Mosis,James Thackery, Jesus A. Salazar,
Yanlan Mao, Graham A. Dunn, Timo Betz, Mark Miodownik, Brian M. Stramer
Inter-Cellular Forces Orchestrate Contact Inhibition of Locomotion, (2015) Cell, 161, 1–13.
J. J. Munoz, V. Conte, N. Asadipour, M. Miodownik. (2013) A truss element for modelling reversible softening in living tissues. Mechanics Research Communications 49, 44-49.
Vito Conte, Florian Ulrich, Buzz Baum, Jose Muñoz, Jim Veldhuis, Wayne Brodland, Mark Miodownik (2012) A Biomechanical Analysis of Ventral Furrow Formation in the Drosophila Melanogaster Embryo. PLoS ONE 7(4): e34473.
Brodland GW, Conte V, Cranston PG, Veldhuis J, Narasimhan S, Hutson MS, Jacinto A, Ulrich F, Baum B, Miodownik M. Video force microscopy reveals the mechanics of ventral furrow invagination in Drosophila. PNAS 2010 Dec 2
Cohen M, Baum B, Miodownik M. The importance of structured noise in the generation of self-organizing tissue patterns through contact-mediated cell-cell signalling. Journal of Royal Society Interface. 2010 Nov 17.
Michael Cohen and Marios Georgiou, Nicola L. Stevenson, Mark Miodownik and Buzz Baum. Dynamic filopodia transmit intermittent Delta-Notch signalling to drive pattern refinement during lateral inhibition. Developmental Cell, Vol. 19, No. 1. (20 July 2010), pp. 78-89.