Future Industries Institute, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia 5095, AustraliaPolymer biomaterials; Hydrogels; 3d (bio)printing; Tissue engineering; Drug & vaccine delivery
Ferry Melchels is Research Professor: Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering in the Future Industries Institute at the University of South Australia. His main interests lie in polymeric biomaterials for 3D printing, tissue engineering, and drug and vaccine delivery. His work has been published in leading journals, attracting over 17,000 citations. He is a recipient of the Patrick Neill Medal from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Mid-Career Investigator Award from the International Society for Biofabrication.
Ferry holds an MSc (2005) in chemical engineering and PhD (2010) in biomaterials from the University of Twente (The Netherlands). He has held positions at Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia), University Medical Center Utrecht (The Netherlands) and Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh, UK).
Volumetric bioprinting (VBP) represents a groundbreaking approach in additive manufacturing, which implicates a contactless building three-dimensional (3D) structure within a bioink-containing container. This novel approach promises super-fast production times, more intricate tissue-like structure geometries and new biomaterial properties; making it a key technology of interest for tissue engineering. This special issue, titled "Volumetric 3D Bioprinting: Unveiling its Future", aims to explore the latest advancements, challenges (i.e. multimaterial, resolution and scalability) and future directions of volumetric 3D bioprinting with a range of research and review papers, being the first special issue of this cutting-edge bioprinting topic.