Invited by Assistant Professor Huanping Zhou of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Professor Wei Sun gave a lecture about the opportunities and challenges of 3D Printing and Bio-3D Printing to the College of Engineering students on January 6th.

Dr. Wei Sun is currently appointed as National “Thousand-Talent” Distinguished Professor and Director of Biomanufacturing Research Center at Tsinghua University, China, and Albert Soffa Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Drexel University, USA. His research has been on Biofabrication, 3D Bio-Printing, Computer-Aided Tissue Engineering, and Additive Manufacturing. His research has been sponsored by National Science Foundation (NSF), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Chinese Natural Science Foundation (CNSF) and Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology. He has published over 350 journal and conference papers/abstracts and conducted over 220 national and international invited presentations in the field of his research.

His presentation first gave an overview of 3D Printing according to its technological development and application stages. He introduced four types of 3D Printing techniques, including Stereo Lithography Apparatus (SLA), Selective Laser Sintering (SLS), Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM), and Laminated Object Manufacturing (LOM). He then reported the recent advances on 3D Bioprinting, described engineering printing process, and gave examples of applying 3D Printing techniques to develop tissue engineering model, drug metabolism model and disease model. Finally, he discussed the opportunities and challenges in the field of Bio-3D Printing, and pointed out that in the next 10-20 years, 3D Printing will advance through the stage of printing implants to cells and tissues, and finally possibly organs.