Research Team

Dr. Tohid Didar holds Canada Research Chair (CRC) in NanoBiomaterials and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, School of Biomedical Engineering and a member of the Institute for Infectious Disease Research (IIDR) at McMaster University. Before joining McMaster in January 2016, Dr. Didar was a postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University in Professor Donald Ingber’s lab. There he designed and developed a robust and clinically relevant extracorporeal dialysis-like treatment (DLT) device for sepsis. Since joining McMaster in 2016, he has established a world class interdisciplinary research platform on smart, multifunctional nano-biomaterials, and has fostered strategic industry collaborations within the biomedical and food sectors. Due to his contributions to this field, he was awarded the Ontario Early Researcher Award in 2019 and the Engineering Innovation Award of the Year by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers in 2020. In 2019, Dr. Didar co-invented a pathogen repelling plastic wrap (RepelWrap). This technology won the 2020 Grand Prize for the Create the Future Design Concept by Tech Briefs magazine. Dr. Didar has also co-founded FendX (a McMaster spin off) to commercialize pathogen repellant and antimicrobial coatings developed in his lab. Dr. Didar has published over 50 journal papers, over 12 patent applications and has presented over 30 national and international invited talks and keynote speeches.