The design of artificial models of biomineralization has resulted in the union of inorganic materials research and supramolecular organic chemistry. I will describe the application of several different matrices, all of which are composed of a hydrogel coupled with a functionalized surface to control the nucleation and growth of inorganic crystals. In the first system, we combine agarose hydrogels with self-assembled monolayers of alkanethiols on gold to control the orientation and shape of calcite crystals. We have demonstrated that these crystals incorporate the organic material inside of the crystal without disrupting the ordered lattice. In a related system, silk fibroin hydrogels, with and without the occlusion of polypeptides, are combined with self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of alkanethiols on gold to model the growth of calcium carbonate in mollusk shells. In a related system, we have used porous silicon wafers, functionalized with alkenes via hydrosilation, as substrates for the nucleation of calcium phosphates in a gelatin hydrogel. All of these systems provide insight into the role hydrogel matrices play in controlling biomineralization and provide synthetic approaches to organic-inorganic composites for biomedical applications.

Dr. Estroff’s early training was in the field of synthetic organic chemistry at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania . She graduated from Swarthmore in 1997 with a B.A., with Honors, in chemistry and a minor in anthropology. Before beginning her graduate studies, Dr. Estroff spent a year at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot , Israel as a visiting researcher in the labs of Profs Lia Addadi and Steve Weiner. During this time, she was introduced to the field of biomineralization and studied chemical approaches to archeological problems. Dr. Estroff then spent five years in Prof. Andrew D. Hamiltons laboratory developing bio-inspired synthetic approaches to inorganic and organic materials at Yale University . Based on her Ph.D. work, she received both a graduate fellowship from the Division of Organic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society and a graduate student silver award from the Materials Research Society. After receiving her Ph.D. in 2003, she spent two years as an NIH-funded postdoctoral researcher in Prof. George M. Whiteside's laboratory at Harvard University (2003-2005). During this time, she learned techniques as diverse as protein purification, nanoparticle synthesis, and soft lithography. Dr. Estroff has been a member of the Materials Science and Engineering department at Cornell University since August 2005. In Dec. 2006, she was awarded a J.D. Watson Young Investigators award from NYSTAR. She is a member of the Materials Research Society, the American Chemical Society, Phi Beta Kappa, and Sigma Xi.