The fellowship grants allow senior researchers the opportunity to spend time respondong to the challenges set out in the Manufacturing Foresight Report which was announced by Sir Mark Walport, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) and Head of the Government Office for Science, at last year’s EPSRC Manufacturing the Future Conference in Glasgow.
John’s ‘Foresight Fellowship in Manufacturing: Defining and Fabricating New Passive Bio-Sensing Wireless Tag Technologies’ will explore how to produce passive sensors through Additive Manufacturing. Passive sensors are sensors that do not need a battery and can be read wirelessly, allowing them to be very small and long-lasting, widening the opportunities for sensor applications.
Producing passive wireless biosensors is a major challenge that crosses several discipline boundaries: Bioscience, materials science, electronic engineering, chemistry, ink formulation and additive manufacture. Mass or bespoke production of these devices will have many potential applications including health monitoring, assistive technologies and the Internet of Things.
This fellowship will focus on microscale sensors that can be directly integrated into surfaces of medical implants, packaging or transfer tattoos. Initial applications investigated will be detection of biofilms on silicone valves in voice prostheses and efficient epidermal sensing tags for skin based health monitoring.
Congratulations to John.