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Dmitry Volodkin

Dmitry Volodkin

Associate Professor

School of Science & Technology

Staff Group(s)
Chemistry and Forensic Science

Role

Prof Assoc Volodkin is responsible for teaching at Undergraduate and Postgraduate level in a number of modules. He supervises Undergraduate and Postgraduate projects in the team Chemistry and Forensics. Prof Assoc Volodkin leads research in the group “Active-Bio-Coating”.

He is a module leader in the module Modern Day Materials and a personal and academic tutor for students of Year One and Year Two.

Career overview

Prof Assoc Volodkin has studied Chemistry at the Lomonosov Moscow State University in Russia, PhD in 2005. Later research stays brought him to France (University of Strasbourg) and Germany (Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Technical University of Berlin) and in the year 2010 to the Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology (Potsdam) where he has established an independent group.

At the end of 2015 Prof Assoc Volodkin joined NTU. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles, attracted ca 3 Million Euro research funding and received a number of prestigious scientific awards such as Sofja Kovalevskaja Award of Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Richard-Zsigmondy Price of German Colloid Society, Alexander von Humboldt and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowships.

Research areas

Research activities in the group headed by Prof Assoc Volodkin focus on design of advanced stimuli-responsive biomaterials for bio-applications in drug delivery and testing, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine as well as other relevant applications where protection, localization in a confined space, and release on demand are required.

We design 2D and 3D structures which mimic and adopt natural cellular environment and can effectively host and protect bio-factors (e.g. drugs, nucleic acids, growth factors, proteins). The structures can deliver the bio-factors to cell receptors on demand (e.g. by variation of temperature, ionic strength, pH, light irradiation) with high spatiotemporal precision up to a level of single cell.

Researchers in the group engineer composite self-assembled structures with tailor-made properties and dimensions from nano to macro: delivery carriers such as capsules, beads, liposomes; polymeric scaffolds; planar and curved multilayers, etc.

The approaches developed in his group aim at both applications and fundamental understanding the key biological questions. One of our overall goal is to engineer artificial extracellular matrix (ECM) for understanding the dynamics of chemical and physical signals in real ECM. We address both basic and applied aspects in our interdisciplinary research by working in polymer, physical, colloid, and interface chemistry, as well as soft mater, nanomaterials, bio-engineering, etc.

The main areas of research activities include:

  • Self-assembled polymer and lipid structures: multi-layer films, capsules, beads, liposomes, lipid-polymer hybrids, lipid supported bi-layers, etc.
  • Encapsulation of bio-active molecules (proteins, enzymes, nucleic acids, drugs, etc).
  • Controlled release stimulated by bio-degradation and stimuli such as light, temperature, pH, ionic strength.
  • Polymeric scaffolds with focus on cell-surface engineering and two-and three-dimensional cell culture.
  • Mimics of extracellular matrix by formulation of structures offering the controlled diffusion/presentation of signalling molecules.
  • Advanced technologies/instruments e.g. Microfluidics, Raman microscopy, hard and soft templating.

Opportunities arise to carry out postgraduate research towards an MPhil / PhD in the areas identified above. Further information may be obtained on the NTU Research Degrees website https://www.ntu.ac.uk/research/research-degrees-at-ntu

External activity

Organizer committee, scientific advisory board member at scientific events including:

  • Global Congress & Expo on Biomaterials, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2019).
  • 19th World Congress on Materials Science and Engineering, Spain (2018).
  • International workshop "Nanoparticles, Nanostructured Coatings and Microcontainers", MPIKG, Germany (2013).
  • International symposium “Biomimetic particles and coatings”, IBMT, Germany (2012).

Journal Editor:

Journal Micromachines, special Issue "Self-Assembly of Polymers", (2017-2018).

Member of research societies and evaluation committees:

Sponsors and collaborators

Funding and support in the research received from:

Prizes/Awards:

  • Richard-Zsigmondy Price of German Colloid Society (2013)
  • Sofia-Kovalevskaja Award (2010)
  • Award of President of Russia for excellent studies (2003)

Collaborators worldwide from England, Germany, Belgium, Russia, France, Australia, etc.

Publications

Prokopovic VZ., Vikulina AS., Sustr D., Duschl C., Volodkin D. Biodegradation resistant multilayers coated with gold nanoparticles. Towards tailor-made artificial extracellular matrix. ACS Appl Mater Interf 2016, 8(37), 24345.

Feoktistova, N., J. Rose, V.Z. Prokopović, A.S. Vikulina, A. Skirtach, and D. Volodkin, Controlling the Vaterite CaCO3 Crystal Pores. Design of Tailor-Made Polymer Based Microcapsules by Hard Templating. Langmuir, 2016, 32(17), 4229-4238.

Volodkin D. CaCO3 templated micro-beads and -capsules for bioapplications. Adv Colloid Int Sci 2014, 207, 306.

Schmidt S., Behra M., Uhlig K., Madaboosi N., Hartmann L., Duschl C., Volodkin D. Mesoporous Protein Particles Through Colloidal CaCO3 Templates. Adv Funct Mater 2013, 23, 116.

Schmidt S., Madaboosi N., Uhlig K., Köhler D., Skirtach A., Duschl C., Möhwald H., Volodkin D. Control of Cell Adhesion by Mechanical Reinforcement of Soft Polyelectrolyte Films with Nanoparticles. Langmuir 2012, 28, 7249.

Madaboosi N., Uhlig K., Schmidt S., Jager MS., Mohwald H., Duschl C., Volodkin D. Microfluidics meets soft layer-by-layer films: selective cell growth in 3D polymer architectures. Lab Chip 2012, 12, 1434.

Uhlig K., Madaboosi N., Schmidt S., Jager MS., Rose J., Duschl C., Volodkin D. 3D localization and diffusion of proteins in polyelectrolyte multilayers. Soft Matter 2012, 8, 11786.

Volodkin D., Schmidt S., Fernandes P., Larionova NI., Sukhorukov GB., Duschl C., Möhwald H., von Klitzing R. One-Step Formulation of Protein Microparticles with Tailored Properties: Hard Templating at Soft Conditions. Adv Funct Mater 2012, 22, 1914.

Volodkin D., von Klitzing R., Mohwald H. Pure Protein Microspheres by Calcium Carbonate Templating. Angew Chem Int Ed 2010, 49, 9258.

Volodkin D., Skirtach AG., Mohwald H. Near-IR Remote Release from Assemblies of Liposomes and Nanoparticles. Angew Chem Int Ed 2009, 48, 1807.

See all of Dmitry Volodkin's publications...