Information control of chemical and mechanical processing at the scale of cells can be achieved by bringing together nanoelectronic fabrication with custom surface processing to make smart electronic particles that can change their shape and switch chemical reactions. This program, piloted at the 100µm scale in the EU MICREAgents project, is poised to open up new therapeutic and interventional opportunities in a wide variety of fields including biomedicine.
John McCaskill is currently an honorary research fellow of the European Centre for Living Technology, Venice and Independent Research Consultant on these and other issues, including micro and nanorobotics at the nexus of Bio-Info-Nano-Cogno Technology.
John McCaskill has led multidisciplinary research groups in Evolutionary Molecular Self-Organisation and Biomolecular Information Processing since 1987: at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, at the Leibniz Institute for Molecular Biotechnology and Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, at the Helmholtz National Research Centre for Information Technology GMD later Fraunhofer Gesellschaft IZB, Sankt Augustin, at the Biomedical Research Centre Dortmund and until 2017 at the Ruhr University Bochum.