Welcome to the Microbicide Delivery Laboratory web site. We are a research group in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Utah. This site is designed to give an overview of our work and is oriented toward prospective coworkers, students and collaborators. It also acts a resource for group members in their work.
A brief overview of our interdisciplinary
program.
The research in our group is focused on the understanding, development, and
application of new materials and delivery technology to prevent the sexual
transmission of HIV. Our designs start with a biological or physical problem,
e.g. how can we increase the phamacological duration of a semisolid gel in
the vaginal cavity. Then we use a materials engineering approach that takes
into account the requisite composition-structure-property relationships required
in a system that will help us solve the problem at hand. Along the way we often
get inspiration from nature in our proposed solution. We use synthetic chemistry
and polymer synthesis to construct these materials and modern analytical and
bioanalytical methods to characterize their composition, structure, properties
and performance.
Making useful materials is difficult without interacting with researchers from other areas of engineering and science so we collaborate with chemists, biologists and engineers from industry and academia. No one group has all the answers. If you are interested in our research, become acquainted with the people who do it by clicking the People and the PFK buttons. Learn more about what we do outside the lab by going to the Gallery, and see the stunning Utah outdoors and our great city SLC. We hope that you will find this web site informative. For more information please contact us.
