Research Associate
Dr. Renata L. Sala is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Melville Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis in the University of Cambridge.
Renata obtained her BSc. in Chemistry from the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil in 2011. As undergraduate student, Renata was awarded a NSF Fellowship to carry out a three-month research at the University of Florida under the supervision of Prof. Charles Cao (2010). Her research focused on the synthesis of silica/polymer core/shell nanoparticles encapsulated with gold nanoparticles/nanorods as potential contrast agents. Renata obtained both MSc. (2014) and PhD (2018) in Physical Chemistry at Federal University of São Carlos under the supervision of Prof. Emerson R. Camargo. Her master’s thesis centred on the effect of silica nanoparticles with distinct functionalization in the properties of commercial elastomers. Her PhD research involved the synthesis of thermosensitive nanocomposite hydrogels and their application as biomaterials for cartilage tissue engineering. In 2015, she was awarded a fellowship to carry out a one-year research at the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of Prof. Jason A. Burdick. Her research focused on the in vitro and in vivo studies of thermosensitive hydrogels based on poly(N-vinylcaprolactam) encapsulated with mesenchymal stem cells and chondrocytes.
Renata joined the Scherman group in June 2019 as a PDRA working on a novel platform recently developed in The Scherman group and funded by ERC that combines a super-resolution microscope with a squeeze flow rheometer over a broad frequency range. Her current focus is on the synthesis of fluorescent supramolecular hydrogels based of cucurbit[8]ril host-guest chemistry in order to probe their molecular dynamics with spatial and temporal resolution.
More information can be found on her Google Scholar, ResearchGate and Linkedin.