About Messersmith Research Group

About Us

The Messersmith research group is interested in understanding structure-processing- property relationships of materials in biological systems, and in using this information to inform the design, synthesis and application of biologically inspired synthetic materials used in a variety of practical applications. Current projects include molecular mechanochemical studies of biological wet adhesives, the design of biomimetic wet adhesive polymers and polymer composites, the control of biointerfacial phenomena in nanosystems and in antifouling surface coatings, and the development of novel biomaterials for regenerative medicine.

Biosketch

Dr. Messersmith is the Class of 1942 Professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and Materials Science and Engineering at UC- Berkeley. He earned his B.S. degree in life sciences in 1985 from the University of Illinois at Urbana, M.S degree in bioengineering from Clemson University, and his Ph.D. degree in materials science and engineering in 1993 from the University of Illinois at Urbana. Previously, Dr. Messersmith was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University (1993-1994) and a faculty member at the University of Illinois at Chicago (1994-1997) and Northwestern University (1997- 2014). His awards and honors include a MERIT award from the National Institutes of Health, the Langmuir Lecture Award from the American Chemical Society, and the 2013 Clemson Award for Basic Research from the Society for Biomaterials. Dr. Messersmith is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the International Union of Societies of Biomaterials Science and Engineering. Dr. Messersmith is co-Editor in Chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Biomaterials Science, and is a member of the editorial/advisory boards of Soft Matter, Langmuir, Materials Horizons, Nanomedicine, Biointerphases, Biomedical Materials, and Bioinspired, Biomimetic and Nanobiomaterials.