Lebanon's Serge Nader wins for his sustainable 3D prints in Canada

Lebanon's Serge Nader is one of the University of Alberta's Campus Sustainability Leaders Award 2023 winners for his 3D prints. 

Intrigued by his curiosity, he made in-house lab accessories, which have positive environmental impacts, as instead of ordering items from different locations, and consequently increasing carbon emissions, the lab orders one printing material.  

The polymer used to make those accessories comes from plant-based starches and is industrially compostable, leading to reducing plastic waste.  

According to the University of Alberta, Nader also made his designs open source, meaning that other labs can download and reuse his work.  

"These technologies not only make laboratory accessories more affordable, more available on demand and make the labs be more independent in their logistics, they also, from a sustainability standpoint, are really impactful with reducing the need for storage and worldwide shipping — you can get away from all of this by doing your own thing — just being more independent," said Serge Nader. 

It is worth noting that Serge Nader has a Bachelor's Degree, Biology-biochemistry from the Saint Joseph University of Beirut (USJ) and a Master's Degree in Structure and Interaction of Macromolecules and Functional Genomics from the same university.  

He also obtained his Ph.D. in Structural Biology from Université Grenoble Alpes and has been working as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta in Canada.