Meet our visiting PhD student Xianbin Zhang
During my PhD studies in solid mechanics at the Jilin University, I specialised in computer simulations, focussing on studying the mechanical environment within tissue engineering scaffolds and its influence on cell behaviour during in vitro culture. I got in touch with bone tissue engineering while I was working as a PhD candidate at the State Key Laboratory of Automotive Simulation and Control in China. My main task was to evaluate the effect of morphological parameters on the related properties of scaffold in multiple perspectives. It was there that I learn about the possibility to work as visiting researcher at the Department of Biomaterials for one year.
What have you learned in Oslo?
The project I am working on attempts to investigate the mechanical environment in biomaterials, especially in porous TiO2 bone scaffold materials. Therefore, the mechanical environment in different materials is evaluated by considering the effect of cell culture conditions, pore morphology and material properties. The approach is to create real models of different biomaterials, and thus, the fluid-solid mechanical environment was analyzed by finite element analysis.
Department of Biomaterials has high performance computing system (HPC) for simulations and a wide variety of instruments for experiments. Furthermore, the researchers come from all over the world, and the work atmosphere is very friendly and helpful. The multicultural environment in the lab is helpful for people to obtain different skills and improve their social abilities, which gives me a very exciting study experience in Oslo.