New biomaterials textbook fills niche in bioengineering education

Biomaterials: The Intersection of Biology and Materials Science, written by Johnna S. Temenoff and Antonios G. Mikos, is a comprehensive, fundamental, biomaterials textbook designed to cover basic principles of biomaterials science and engineering, address complex issues associated with the structure and biocompatibility of synthetic materials, and cite in-depth applications for new medical devices.

Published by Pearson Prentice-Hall, the textbook was written for second and third-year undergraduate bioengineering students and is being used by several universities in the U.S. and abroad.

“This textbook will undoubtedly become a staple in biomaterials education,” said Nicholas A. Peppas, Sc.D., the Fletcher S. Pratt Chair of Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Pharmacy at the University of Texas at Austin.

Prior to publication, the textbook was used in course-note form in the bioengineering departments at Rice University and Georgia Institute of Technology/Emory University. The development of the book began as an ambitious project between Temenoff (Rice Ph.D. '03) and Mikos in 2003.

Mikos, the J.W. Cox Professor of Bioengineering, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, and director of Rice's Center for Excellence in Tissue Engineering, specializes in a broad range of research topics, including the synthesis, processing, and evaluation of new biomaterials for use as scaffolds for tissue engineering, as carriers for controlled drug delivery, and as non-viral vectors for gene therapy. His work has won several prestigious awards for the development of novel orthopedic, dental, cardiovascular, neurologic, and ophthalmologic biomaterials. Mikos holds 23 patents, has authored more than 350 publications, and is a founding editor of the journals Tissue Engineering Part A, Tissue Engineering Part B: Reviews, and Tissue Engineering Part C: Methods. He is president elect of the North American Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society and the organizer of the continuing education course Advances in Tissue Engineering offered annually at Rice University since 1993.

Temenoff is an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Her research in developing model systems and novel tissue engineering scaffolds to regenerate interfaces in orthopaedic tissues earned her a 2008 NSF CAREER Award. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 2005, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Mikos Research Group. She earned her doctorate in Bioengineering at Rice under Mikos’ supervision where she was a Whitaker Fellow and winner of the Best Thesis Award from the George R. Brown School of Engineering. Her undergraduate degree is in biomedical engineering from Case Western Reserve University.