Jones Seminar: Designing Materials for Seamless Interfaces with the Nervous System

Biomaterial scaffolds have emerged as a tool to build 3D cultures of cells which better resemble biological systems, while advancements in bioelectronics have enabled the modulation of cell proliferation, differentiation, and migration. Often, the same materials and processing techniques from the electronics industry are used to interface with the nervous system. As the materials used for electronics are often mechanically stiff and brittle, they offer limited interfaces with the nervous system and have minimal conformability or contact with the underlying tissues. Further, this mechanical modulus mismatch leads to irreversible tissue damage.

I’ll describe our work in mechanically and electrically supportive hydrogels, designed to have the same mechanical modulus and also viscoelasticity as neural tissue. Electrical conductivity is achieved by create conductive hydrogel composites, and incorporating low amount of carbon nanomaterials into a hydrogel matrix. By tuning the materials processing techniques, we are able to introduce highly porous networks with electrical percolation. These materials can be integrated with mechanically supportive hydrogels and viscoelastic insulation layers, to create a fully viscoelastic ultraconformable electrode array capable of conforming to the entire cortical surface of the brain. 

Hosted by professors Rebecca Gallivan and Alexander Boys.

About the Speaker(s)

Christina Tringides
Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Nanoengineering, Rice University

Christina Tringides is an assistant professor at Rice University, in the Materials Science and Nanoengineering department, a core member of the Neuroengineering Initiative, and a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Scholar. She was named to the 2024 MIT Technology Review "35 under 35" innovator list, and received the Sontag Foundation "Distinguished Scientist Award" in 2025. Before starting her own group in 2024, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Janos Vörös. She earned her BS degrees in physics and in materials science and engineering from MIT, and her PhD degree came from Harvard Biophysics and the Medical Engineering Medical Physics program between Harvard and MIT. Tringides's research focuses on developing new materials and neurotechnologies to interface with the nervous system, from the cell to organ levels, and for both in vivo and in vitro applications.

Contact

For more information, contact Amos Johnson at amos.l.johnson@dartmouth.edu .