Doctoral thesis success: Sonja Kuth
Congratulations to Sonja Kuth on successfully defending her doctoral thesis titled “Development of hydrogels based on oxidized hyaluronic acid for neural applications” on 26th September 2025. Sonja carried out her doctoral project in our Institute, supervised by Prof. Aldo R. Boccaccini. The defense was conducted in presence in Erlangen and the members of the doctoral defense committee were: Prof. Carmen Villmann (University of Würzburg), PD Dr. Stefan Rampp (Faculty of Medicine, FAU), Prof. Dominique de Ligny (Dept. of Materials Sci. and Engineerig, FAU) (chair) and Prof. Boccaccini. Prof. Boccaccini highlighted the impactful results obtained by Sonja in her doctoral project. Sonja developed and characterised novel hyaluronic acid based hydrogels, which were optimized and investigated for possible neurological applications, for example in neural regeneration therapies, brain phantoms, and as matrices for in vitro studies in contact with neural cells. Several papers have been already published resulting from Sonja’s thesis (for example ref. [1-2]). Many congratulations to Sonja for the successful defense of her doctoral thesis, we wish her all the best in her future career.
[1] S. Kuth, et al., Oxidized hyaluronic acid-gelatin based hydrogels for tissue engineering and soft tissue mimicking, Tissue Eng Part C Methods. (2022).https://doi.org/10.1089/ten.TEC.2022.0004
[2] S. Kuth, A.R. Boccaccini, Enzymatic insitu crosslinking can improve hydrogel stability while maintaining matrix stiffness, ChemistrySelect. 9 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1002/slct.202401700.
