First Keynote Speaker Announced: Dr Duane Harland, from the Bioeconomy Science Institute, New Zealand
- TRI Princeton
- 39 minutes ago
- 2 min read
FIRST KEYNOTE SPEAKER ANNOUNCED:
DR DUANE HARLAND, FROM THE BIOECONOMY SCIENCE INSTITUTE, NEW ZEALAND
We are excited to announce our first keynote speaker for the 12 th TRI International Conference on Applied Hair Science. Dr Duane Harland, from The Bioeconomy Science Institute, New Zealand. Duane will give a presentation titled ‘Growing style – the origin of hair shape and strength’. Our Conference will take place on Tuesday 2nd to Thursday 4th June 2025, at the Oyster Point Hotel, Red Bank, New Jersey. Registrations open this week.
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Duane, for the past 23 years, has worked at the Bioeconomy Science Institute (formerly AgResearch) New Zealand as part of a team that has studied the structure, function and biological assembly of human hair, wool, and hair from a menagerie of other mammals. Primarily the team’s research has included combinations of microstructural, proteomic, lipidomic, and protein chemistry science of hair and follicles, and biomimetic application of protein science into new materials and products.
Duane’s presentation abstract reads as follows:
Like all biological things, hair varies. This includes curl, diameter, ellipticity, strength and colour. Although hair is technically dead, it originates from a living hair follicle. It is the processes within hair follicles that defines the product inexorably growing at glacial speed from our scalp. In this talk I’ll focus on a few hair properties and explore what we know about their origin during hair growth, as well as factors that may influence them. While some aspects of hair, such as melanin deposition, are largely independent of other factors, other factors, such as strength and shape, are almost certainly emergent properties. These are shaped by a complex interplay of parameters, including those active in the living cells near the follicle base, the dead cells above the bulb, and those in various transitional stages. A better understanding of how specific hair properties arise may lead to products that intervene to modulate innate hair properties, or it may simply deepen our appreciation for the remarkable and intricate processes behind our natural style.