Muthu Vignesh Vellayappan (Monash University) blew the audience away at the FameLab Australia 2018 National Final with his work creating patches to mend broken hearts.

Heart diseases are killing 1 Australian every 12minutes. Heart transplantation remains the only definitive treatment but donors are limited and most patients die while waiting for a suitable heart. Heart patches can be used to treat heart patients but the heart muscle cells don’t efficiently align on the patch, leading to poor healing. Muthu’s research attempts to fill this void by using 3D printing and post-processing techniques to produce an effective grooved cardiac patch material.