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Dr Aline Miller - personal details

 

Contact details

Role: Senior Lecturer in Biomolecular Engineering

Tel: 0161 306-5781

Location: Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre-G.1.027
School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science
The University of Manchester
Manchester
M13 9PL

Websites

 

Biography

 

Dr. Aline Miller is a senior lecturer in the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science & the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre, University of Manchester having previously been lecturer since 2002. Prior to her appointment in Manchester she held a New Hall Junior Research Fellowship at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University. She is a chemist by training (B.Sc. and Ph.D.) and during this time gained several awards, for example the Sir George Beilby Medal and the Hackman Research Fellowship. More recently she was awarded the Exxon Mobil Teaching Fellowship in 2004 and in 2008 was awarded both the Royal Society of Chemistry MacroGroup UK Young Researchers Medal and the Institute of Physics Polymer Physics Group Young Researchers Lecture Award for her work on self-assembling protein and peptide materials.

 

 

Ongoing projects currently include:
 
  • Design of peptide based materials for drug delivery
  • Enzyme catalysed synthesis of peptide based scaffolds for tissue engineering applications
  • Protein fibrillar networks as scaffolds for regenerative medicine
  • Understanding and controlling aggregation of biopharmaceutical actives
  • Characterisation of biologically derived anisotropic fluids
  • Photo-induced polymerisation at the air-water interface
  • Equilibrium Behaviour of Polyelectrolyte Systems
 

Aline's research interests lie at the life-science interface where particular emphasis is placed on applying physical principles to mimic, manipulate and improve biomolecular self-assembly. Her group is currently focusing on three themes; protein self-assembly, de novo designed polymer-peptide conjugate self-assemblyand surfactants at interfaces. The unifying theme is to relate the physics of self-assembly to functional, microstructural and mechanical properties to gain both process and product control. In particular her group has made notable contributions in understanding and controlling therapeutic protein aggregation during processing, the development and characterization of thermally reversible protein hydrogels for use as in vitro tissue engineering scaffolds, and the development of stimuli-responsive peptide and peptide-conjugates to control stem cell differentiation and proliferation. Such work is highly interdisciplinary and her group currently consists of researchers from the Life Sciences, Chemical Engineering and Chemistry fields, who are supported from disparate agencies reflecting this cross-disciplinary focus. Aline has published many conference proceedings and journal articles over the last decade and has given a significant number of invited lectures at international conferences, national and international academic institutions and pharmaceutical and personal care companies.

Memberships

Qualifications

1997 - 2000 PhD in Polymer Science, Durham University. Viva date 18.12.2000.
Thesis title: Organisation and Dynamics of Well-Defined Graft Copolymers at the Air-Water Interface. Supervisor Prof. Randal Richards.
1993 - 1997 B.Sc. First Class Honours in Chemistry, Strathclyde University.
Awarded 14.06.1997.
1995 - 1996 Undergraduate exchange year, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA.

 

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