Dr. Liqun Ning, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering (MCE), has been awarded a two-year, $200,000 Engineering Research Initiation (ERI) award from the National Science Foundation for his project titled “ERI: Investigating Scaffold Degradation for Peripheral Nerve Regeneration: From Mechanism to in vivo Application.” The ERI program supports new investigators as they initiate their research programs and advance in their careers as researchers, educators, and innovators. 

Nerve scaffolds are three-dimensional structures composed of biomaterials and provide a framework for nerve cells to grow and connect. Degradable scaffolds generally result in higher quality nerve regeneration compared to non-degradable ones, but there is currently a limited understanding of how the degradation assists with nerve growth and how to optimize scaffold structures. Dr. Ning’s research will focus on understanding the material-structure-degradation relationships of nerve scaffolds and the links between scaffold degradation and nerve regeneration. To study this, he will develop a more precise bioprinting method to tailor the scaffold structures and will utilize a novel, non-invasive synchrotron-based micro-CT imaging platform to study the scaffolds in vivo.

Before joining CSU, Dr. Ning was a postdoctoral scholar at Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology, where he developed biomaterials and biomanufacturing strategies. Dr. Ning and Dr. Geyou Ao, an associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering (CBE) were recently awarded NSF funding to study 3-D printing of tissue scaffolds incorporating Schwann Cells to promote nerve regeneration.