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For a list of all talks at the NanoBio seminar Series Fall'21, see here

An amazing range of new magnetic nanomaterials have been developed by the semiconductor and data storage industry as part of their adoption of spintronic technologies. Most of these materials are focused on the storage, retrieval and processing of digital data, e.g. hard disk drives in the Cloud or new designs of low energy microprocessors. But could these same materials be used for other things, outside of the world of digital data? In this talk I describe how we have re-tasked advanced magnetic nanomaterials for problems in biomedicine. In particular, I show a novel form of cancer therapy based on mechanical disruption of cellular structure using spinning magnetic nanostructures, our work towards early stage detection of kidney cancer using magnetic nanostructures, new approaches to antibacterial materials and work on live adherent cells riding on the backs of nanostructured magnetic carriers for drug discovery.

Russell Cowburn obtained his PhD in condensed matter physics from the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge in 1996 and was appointed lecturer at Durham University, UK in 2000. In 2005 he took up the Chair in Nanotechnology at Imperial College London from where he returned to the Cavendish Laboratory as Director of Research in 2010. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2010, has founded three start-up companies and has around 70 granted patents. His research interests include spintronics, nanoscale magnetism, laser optics and biotechnology. In recent years his research has been recognised by the awarding of a number of prizes, including the Royal Society's Paterson Medal, the Hermes International Technology Award and the Degussa Science to Business Award.​