Bionanotechnology is a branch of nanotechnology which uses biological starting materials, utilises biological design or fabrication principles, or is applied in medicine or biotechnology.

Bionanotechnology has become an exiting field of research and an area of technology development, especially since the length scale nanotecnology can access more and more coincides with the length scale of basic biological structures and fundamental biological components.

Research topics

Biophysics and biopolymers

Understanding the fundamentals behind interactions and adoption of higher order organisation of biological macromolecules, can lead to important technological advances within intensive care, heart surgery, the treatment of patients with cancer or diabetes, and much more.

Bionanotechnology and biomaterials

We apply a broad range of techniques to study important phenomena in biology, nanotechnology and biomaterial science. We do that by employing advanced experimental methods including optical and electron microscopy, spectroscopy, micro and nano-fabrication.

Microfluidics

Microfluidics is plumbing at the microscale, controlling fluids in channels with a diameter comparable to a human hair or smaller. We are using micro- and nanofluidic systems to study biological interactions and automate complex processes for biomedical applications.

Monte Carlo simulations of coarse-grained biophysical systems

Simple coarse-grain systems are developed to mimic and study the interaction of biological molecules resorting to Monte Carlo simulations. Systems of interest include the formation of polyplexes, condensation of macromolecules onto model lipid membranes and the condensation of DNA in model bacterial cells.