Multi-million project with the participation of CEPLAS scientists approved.

In a joint effort of researchers from CEPLAS-University of Düsseldorf, University of Wageningen, University of Edinburgh and the ETH Zürich, a project with a total budget of 4.7 Mio Euros for five years has been funded within one of the most competitive and prestigious excellence scientific call within the H2020, namely Future and Emerging Technologies (FET).

The project called ‘CyGenTiG – Cybergenetic tissue engineering’ will focus on overcoming a serious bottleneck to the widespread availability of engineered animal tissues for clinical use: Currently, building of new tissues requires inefficient, manual manipulation that is time-consuming, labour-intensive and introduces high variability in the finished products. Relieving this limitation has implications for both health and wealth. The project will capitalize on the skills of its network of laboratories to build and demonstrate a core cybergenetics technology combining machine vision and computer modelling with optogenetics, and closed-loop, self-correcting control for the development of engineered synthetic animal tissues.
The group of Prof. Matias Zurbriggen (Institute of Synthetic Biology, CEPLAS-HHU) will provide the expertise in synthetic biology and optogenetics and will receive 820,000 euros of the 4.7 Mio grant.

FET-OPEN funds projects on new ideas for radically new future technologies, at an early stage when there are few researchers working on a project topic. This can involve a wide range of new technological possibilities, inspired by cutting-edge science, unconventional collaborations or new research and innovation excellent science pillars of H2020.



Read more about <link internal-link internal link in current>Prof. Dr. Matias Zurbriggen’s research focus