Biomaterials processing expert wins Royal Academy of Engineering award

Professor Mohan Edirisinghe wins Royal Academy of Engineering award Congratulations to Professor Mohan Edirisinghe OBE FREng, the Bonfield Chair of Biomaterials at UCL Mechanical Engineering, who is to be awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering's Colin Campbell Mitchell Award 2023. The annual award goes to an engineer, or small team of engineers, who have made an outstanding contribution to the advancement of any field of UK engineering. Professor Edirisinghe, who leads UCL Engineering's Biomaterials Processing Lab, is recognised for his world-leading contribution to the industrial application of polymeric fibres by inventing novel fibre manufacturing vessels and processes. He has pioneered a process called pressurised gyration, which can simultaneously combine flow rate, applied pressure and rotation speed and is applicable to all types of polymers worldwide. This low-cost, minimal maintenance technology can be mass produced and manufactured at a global scale for specific applications in many engineering domains, enabling smart fibre to be made in a more sustainable way without the high-voltage electric fields used in electrospinning. These core-sheath fibres are particularly useful in healthcare, where the core provides mechanical integrity while the sheath contains active ingredients. Applications for these sheaths include creating materials which could help combat antimicrobial resistance.