welcome to the science for the public lecture series science for the public is an organization committed to bringing science information and issues to the general public visit our website for our program is a post doctoral fellow in the lab of the u s institute for biologically inspired engineering at harvard university where he works with the founding director donald ingber dr fernandez received his p nano biotechnology from the institute for bio engineering of catalonia university about barcelona in spain before joining the vs institute he was a post doctoral fellow at mit where he developed a technology called micro masonry a unique structure that he'll tell us some more about tonight our immediate interest is his more recent innovation called shrill this material is a biocompatible replacement for plastic shrilled is very strong but light and it can be molded into complex shapes and a wide range of flexibility things it can be used for commercial products but it is also of interest in medicine specifically for tissue regeneration processes for this development dr fernandez has recently received the bayer early excellence in science award given to exceptional innovators who are shaping the future of environmentally friendly manufacturing we will certainly be hearing a lot about dr fernandez in coming years and it is an honor to hear him talk about his work abundant in various types of structures like insect wings and so on can you tell us anything about that structure in terms of its many uses many many functions many  of material in it but it's also in the joints and other structures right so it takes different forms yet it's this material and you did you say that it did to the volves like the different we found that that we can't reproduce that right now the product itself is called shrill so it has these different components there's one more here in the shrimp case of the shell as well can you tell us then make the fabric the kind of material itself right now in the end product you want to have different flexibility and stiffness and stuff the different get a different ride flexibility i guess is different other features about the thing and so in terms of what you could produce we'll put some images also into the the videotape where we do it but these are products of this right and the beauty of this is that it's cheap to produce and also that it's  this is there a problem with scale like this is plastic lots of things are plastic that are all around us everything is plastic and we would want to develop stuff is that a problem once you get to larger scale different thing so that's more like the manufacturers problem they can work on that i just meant was there in principle anything you know to to restrict it seems like not really not really i mean  now so you could make any range of products that you're anticipating that and then manufacturers have to take up the rest of that and that sort of outside the lab at that point probably there is a very interesting product like this then are there ways for you to protect it you get patents for this this is less familiar to us in terms of developing products so how found so they're making very clear the point that everything that these don't so make a change in their society that's a model that's a need to do like economic profit right but right make a change right so one of the things that we realize and we know is that if i and get back to the medical part again and you develop something else that's really very interesting is that micro masonry with the little cell thing i wonder if you could tell us about that  as well and i wonder if you could also include something about that i think there's a lot of work on scaffolding into building tissue but yours is so close to practically print and or people had their little tiny specialties you know or something but it's out of the box now that everybody as you said before you seem to have to be learning sometimes from the ground up or you know a whole new field  all the time and you have to have a lot of scientists have exactly that mentality they joy that that's a lot of fun but that is a lot of work is the death but what i mean it doesn't feel like war coming  same idea this is very exciting very rewarding too because you're really helping people with a lot of the things that you are are doing what would you what would you like to do if you could do anything now for the next five or road and we'll see you again very famous but you're certainly longer in that line and so ok i'm going to turn it over for let people talk to you questions here and i like what kind of work goes into that so what kind of work so in do you mean making tens of times people doing it or just like how would you go about doing what what kind of working process is it how how in the post consumer realm how quickly stroke breakdown is it suitable for your campus with your be a new number for your recycle bin will continue in the other plastics if it gets recycled with them so