Research by Queen Mary academics has been accepted into Engineering and Medicine Biology conference 2026 in Toronto on 27th July.

The research, by Sardar Wasif Ashraf Khan, Dr Roberto Volpe and Tayyab Ahmad Ansari, focuses on a low-cost automated dip-coating system and a PVA-assisted fabrication approach for producing polymeric membranes intended for heart valve leaflet applications.

This is relevant to biomedical engineering because material fabrication, membrane uniformity and scalable processing are important challenges in the development of polymer-based cardiovascular device components.

Their paper titled “Low-Cost Automated Dip-Coater and PVA-Assisted Fabrication of Polymeric Heart Valve Leaflet Membranes.” will be presented as part of the Devices & Wearables section of the conference.

The research forms part of Sardar's PhD research on polymeric materials and fabrication approaches for heart valve leaflet applications. He said "I am very pleased that this work has been accepted for poster presentation at EMBC 2026. This is an important milestone in my PhD research, as it gives us the opportunity to share our work on low-cost automated dip-coating and PVA-assisted fabrication of polymeric membranes for heart valve leaflet applications with an international biomedical engineering audience. I am grateful for the guidance and support of Dr Roberto Volpe and for the collaboration with Tayyab Ahmad Ansari throughout this work."