Dr John Hardy

John completed his undergraduate studies in chemistry at the University of Bristol, followed by his PhD in the group of Prof. David Smith at the University of York focused on biomaterials chemistry. He subsequently undertook a decade of interdisciplinary engineering-focused postdoctoral training overseas to broaden his scientific horizons: first as an Entente Cordiale Fellow in the lab of Prof. Jean-Marie Lehn in France (Chemistry); then as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in the lab of Prof. Thomas Scheibel in Germany (Materials Science and Engineering); then as postdoctoral research associate in the lab of Prof. Christine Schmidt (Biomedical Engineering) first at the University of Texas at Austin and thereafter helping setup her new lab at the University of Florida in Gainesville (with a short sojourn in Prof. David Kaplan’s group at Tufts University in Medford); and finally as an Industrial Research Fellow in the lab of Prof. Colin McCoy (Pharmacy) at Queen’s University Belfast (UK), with a short sojourn in the labs of the industrial sponsors, Teleflex Inc., in Athlone (Ireland) and Boston (USA). He began his independent career as a 50th Anniversary Lecturer in Materials Chemistry at Lancaster University in August 2015 and is currently Senior Lecturer. During his time in the USA he developed the first examples of biodegradable electroactive polymer-based drug delivery devices, and biomaterials with biomimetic properties for drug delivery, neuromodulation and tissue engineering. He leads an interdisciplinary research group undertaking basic and applied research at the interface of biomedical and life sciences, chemistry, engineering and pharmacy for the generation of stimuli-responsive materials (particularly bioelectronics) for biomedical applications, and 3D printing.