idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

Nachrichten, Termine, Experten

Grafik: idw-Logo
Science Video Project
idw-Abo

idw-News App:

AppStore

Google Play Store



Instanz:
Teilen: 
23.12.2020 12:27

Andreas Walther receives ERC Consolidator Grant for the development of intelligent materials

Kathrin Voigt Kommunikation und Presse
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

    EU funding for research into materials with both artificial and lifelike properties

    Artificially created smart, intelligent materials with properties characteristic of life – this is the aim of Professor Andreas Walther's research at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz (JGU), for which the chemist is now receiving EUR 2 million in EU funding. Walther plans to produce mechanical materials equipped with the ability to adapt, learn, and interact. The long-term goal is to generate a form of coevolution between synthetic materials and living cells, which would blur the boundaries between animate and inanimate matter. The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded Professor Andreas Walther an ERC Consolidator Grant, one of the most richly endowed EU funding awards given to top-level researchers, for his Metabolic Mechanical Materials: Adaptation, Learning & Interactivity (M³ALI) project. Walther joined Mainz University in October 2020 from the University of Freiburg.

    Providing mechanical materials with the ability to adapt, learn, and interact

    Plastics have been industrially manufactured for over 100 years and are now present in all areas of our lives. "Plastics, or more generally, materials with a polymer structure have shaped and improved human life over the past century. Today, there are polymers that change in response to external stimuli and developments inspired by the world of biology with innovative functions and properties," explained Walther. However, these materials are far less complex and dynamic than living, self-organizing systems. "If we were able to endow synthetic materials with the qualities of living organisms, we could transform these otherwise static substances into dynamic, truly intelligent, and fully interactive material systems."

    Against this background, the central goal of the M³ALI project is to incorporate concepts for adaptation, for simple learning through training, and for interaction into polymer materials. The materials would be able to interact with living cells so that a kind of language could evolve that would enable matter and cells to communicate – with the result that they could influence each other and jointly develop.

    According to Walther, for the generation of materials with lifelike properties with adaptive behavior it is important to incorporate memory functions, so that a material remembers its past and aligns its future behavior accordingly. In addition, pathways for signal processing must be devised and forms of communication established to translate different types of signals – in chemical, physical, and mechanical forms.

    These intelligent materials are to be created using DNA-based hydrogels. "I will try to link various research areas together in the M³ALI project and combine what we have achieved to date. The new direction we are taking involves metabolic-mechanical materials that can be trained, that learn and adapt, and show interactive behavior in systems," said Professor Andreas Walther, summarizing the work ahead. Possible applications could be tissue cultures that could be used to create artificial tissue structures or even trainable, self-learning materials, such as artificial muscles.

    ERC funding for most groundbreaking research approaches

    Andreas Walther was born in 1980 and studied at the University of Bayreuth, where he received a doctorate in chemistry in 2008 for his thesis on self-organized materials. As a postdoc, he studied biomimetic hybrid materials at Aalto University in Helsinki in Finland. In 2011, Walther returned to Germany and established a research group at the DWI Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials in Aachen. In 2016, he was appointed to a position in Freiburg and until September 2020 worked as a professor at the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry at the University of Freiburg, at the Freiburg Materials Research Center (FMF), and as deputy director at the Freiburg Center for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies (FIT). He was a senior research fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies and the Strasbourg Institute for Advanced Study, and also coordinated the joint French-German Polymer Science program. He is also one of the founders of the Freiburg Cluster of Excellence "Living, Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems" (livMatS), in which he will continue to be involved as an associate researcher. In October 2020, Walther was appointed Professor of Macromolecular Chemistry at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. He is also a fellow of the Gutenberg Research College at JGU.

    The ERC Consolidator Grant is one of the most richly endowed EU funding awards given to individual researchers The European Research Council uses these grants to support outstanding researchers, usually within seven to twelve years of completing their doctorate. In order to receive the grant, applicants must not only demonstrate excellence in research, but also provide evidence of the pioneering nature of their project and its feasibility. The funding period is five years.

    Images:
    https://download.uni-mainz.de/presse/staff_09_walther.jpg
    Professor Dr. Andreas Walther
    photo/©: private

    https://download.uni-mainz.de/presse/09_chemie_mechanoresponsive_dna-hydrogele.j...
    Mechanoresponsive DNA hydrogels release new DNA segments when stretched. These DNA segments can serve as the starting point for adaptive and interactive processes. The system status can be determined with the help of an optical signal.
    ill./©: Andreas Walther

    Related links:
    https://erc.europa.eu/news/CoG-recipients-2020 – press release of the European Research Council ;
    https://www.grc.uni-mainz.de/prof-andreas-walther – GRC Fellow Professor Dr. Andreas Walther


    Wissenschaftliche Ansprechpartner:

    Professor Dr. Andreas Walther
    Macromolecular Chemistry
    Department of Chemistry
    Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU)
    55099 Mainz, GERMANY
    e-mail: andreas.walther@uni-mainz.de
    https://www.walther-group.com/


    Bilder

    Professor Dr. Andreas Walther
    Professor Dr. Andreas Walther

    photo/©: private


    Merkmale dieser Pressemitteilung:
    Journalisten, jedermann
    Biologie, Chemie, Werkstoffwissenschaften
    überregional
    Forschungsprojekte, Wissenschaftliche Publikationen
    Englisch


     

    Professor Dr. Andreas Walther


    Zum Download

    x

    Hilfe

    Die Suche / Erweiterte Suche im idw-Archiv
    Verknüpfungen

    Sie können Suchbegriffe mit und, oder und / oder nicht verknüpfen, z. B. Philo nicht logie.

    Klammern

    Verknüpfungen können Sie mit Klammern voneinander trennen, z. B. (Philo nicht logie) oder (Psycho und logie).

    Wortgruppen

    Zusammenhängende Worte werden als Wortgruppe gesucht, wenn Sie sie in Anführungsstriche setzen, z. B. „Bundesrepublik Deutschland“.

    Auswahlkriterien

    Die Erweiterte Suche können Sie auch nutzen, ohne Suchbegriffe einzugeben. Sie orientiert sich dann an den Kriterien, die Sie ausgewählt haben (z. B. nach dem Land oder dem Sachgebiet).

    Haben Sie in einer Kategorie kein Kriterium ausgewählt, wird die gesamte Kategorie durchsucht (z.B. alle Sachgebiete oder alle Länder).