1. science
2. engineering

Keynote and Invited Speaker Biographies
Biographies are listed in order of the Programme
MSK Tribology and Biomechanics (Session 1A)
Artificial joints biomechanics and biotribology
Keynote Speaker: Professor John Fisher
Stratified Medicine and Precision Healthcare: An Emergent Research Opportunity in Biomaterials,
Implants and Regenerative Devices
Professor John Fisher is the University of Leeds’ first Deputy Vice-Chancellor. He supports the ViceChancellor across a range of activities focusing in particular on academic strategy, academic
development and management of the nine academic Faculties. Professor Fisher is also a leading
researcher in Medical and Biological Engineering, as Director of the Institute for Medical and Biological
Engineering iMBE, Director of Wellcome Trust/EPSRC Medical Engineering Centre WELMEC, Director of
EPSRC Innovation and Knowledge Centre in Regenerative Therapies and Devices, Director of N8 Centre
for Regenerative Medicine, Director of White Rose Doctoral Training Centre in Tissue Engineering and
Regenerative Medicine, Co Director of NIHR Leeds Musculoskeletal Biomedical Research Unit. He
provides leadership to over 200 academic researchers in Medical Engineering at Leeds and holds a
grant portfolio of £50m. He has founded four medical device spinouts (including Tissue Regenix plc)
and consults with 4 medical device companies. The iMBE was awarded the 2012 Queen’s Anniversary
Prize, the country’s highest accolade for an academic institution. Professor Fisher received his CBE for
services to Biomedical Engineering, is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, FREng, and of the
Academy of Medical Sciences, FMedSci, a Chartered Engineer, CEng, and Chartered Scientist, CSi.
Session Title:
MSK Tribology and Biomechanics (Session 1B)
MONDAY, 7TH SEPTEMBER 2015 (DAY ONE)
Session Title:
Natural joint biomechanics and biotribology
Keynote Speaker: Professor Nico Verdonschot
Computational models to improve patient care in orthopaedics
Professor Nico Verdonschot is professor at the Biomechanical Engineering department at Twente
University and at the Orthopaedics department of the Radboudumc. Prof Verdonschot is trained as a
mechanical engineer and work at the Orthopaedic Research Laboratory for the last 27 years. He was
coordinator of two European Consortia focusing on orthopedic-biomechanics problems. One such
European project is TLEMsafe in which patient-specific models were generated of patients requiring
severe surgery to their musculoskeletal system (tumor surgery or hip revision surgery). Furthermore,
he is past-president of the Europeon Orthopaedic Research Society, past-president of the International
Society for Technology in Arthroplasty and co-author of over 220 peer-reviewed publications. Recently
his research is focusing on generation of patient-specific computer models using CT, MRI and
ultrasound scanning. With these models he wants to reproduce the musculoskeletal system of humans
in the computer and predict functional outcome after surgery.
Keynote and Invited Speaker Biographies
Biographies are listed in order of the Programme
Rehabilitation Robotics (Session 1A)
Grasping the Nettle: Can Robots Really Deliver Upper Limb
Rehabilitation
Invited Speakers:
James Tresilian, Department of Psychology, University of Warwick
Biography details to follow
Rui Loureiro, Institute of Orthopaedics and Musculoskeletal Science, UCL Institute of Biomedical
Engineering
Biography details to follow
Alastair Cozens, Consultant In Rehabilitation Medicine Grampian University Hospitals NHS Trust and
Director of Skene Software Ltd.
Biography details to follow
Session Title:
Rehabilitation Robotics (Session 1B)
MONDAY, 7TH SEPTEMBER 2015 (DAY ONE)
Session Title:
The Soft Revolution: New Opportunities for Soft Robotics
Invited Speakers:
Jonathan Rossiter: Reader in Robotics and head of the Soft Robotics group at Bristol Robotics Laboratory
Biography details to follow
Rory O’Connor: Acting Head of Department/Senior Lecturer in Rehabilitation Medicine, Leeds Institute of
Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Medicine
Biography details to follow
Ali Alazmani: University Academic Fellow (UAF) Institute of Functional Surfaces, University of Leeds
Biography details to follow
Keynote and Invited Speaker Biographies
Biographies are listed in order of the Programme
Session Title:
Digital Health I
Digital Health (Session 1A)
MONDAY, 7TH SEPTEMBER 2015 (DAY ONE)
Invited Speaker: Professor Jeremy Wyatt
Evaluating eHealth interventions: what do people need to know, and how to find it out?
Jeremy was appointed Leadership Chair in eHealth Research in Leeds in 2012 to set up a new programme
of digital healthcare research and training, and as Royal College of Physicians Clinical Adviser on new
information & communication technologies. His research uncovers scientific principles to guide the
design of clinical and eHealth systems that change the behaviour of clinicians (eg. decision support
systems), patients (eg. self-care apps) and the public (eg. SMS msgs to promote healthy lifestyles). He
trained as a hospital physician in Oxford, London & Glasgow, obtaining MRCP in 1983. He then
discovered medical informatics and carried out doctoral training at London University (Westminster
Medical School, National Heart & Lung Institute) and an MRC-funded post doc at Stanford. He set up the
Institute for Digital Healthcare in Warwick University in 2010, the Dundee Health Informatics Centre
2005 and the NICE R&D programme 2003. He has written three textbooks on eHealth, five series of
tutorial article for major medical journals and 200 articles in all. He was the UK’s first elected Fellow of
the American college of Medical Informatics in 1997, was ranked third worldwide in his discipline in 2009
and has given 40 invited overseas lectures in the last decade, including the Spinoza lecture in
Amsterdam.
Invited Speaker: Dr David Wong
Turning an e-Health intervention into new innovation – a Case Study
Dr. David Wong is a post-doctoral researcher in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering of the University
of Oxford. His current research interests include using machine learning methods for generating
personalised healthcare models and quantitative evaluation of e-Health systems. Most recently, he has
held core responsibility for the design, development and implementation of the SEND e-Health system
for recording and reviewing vital sign observations (www.send-system.co.uk), which is currently being
deployed throughout the Oxford University Hospitals Trust.
Invited Speaker: Dr Alex Casson
Wearable Algorithms: From low power electronics to a truly multi-disciplinary challenge
Dr Alex Casson is a lecturer in the Sensing, Imaging and Signal Processing group in the school of Electrical
and Electronic Engineering at the University of Manchester. Dr Casson's research focuses on real-time
signal processing in low power constrained situations. Typical applications are in brainwave monitoring,
brain-computer interfaces, and transcranial stimulation. He also has extensive expertise in low power
sensor nodes with onboard signal processing, particularly wearable sensors for human monitoring where
signal processing is used to decrease power consumption for energy harvester powered systems.
Keynote and Invited Speaker Biographies
Biographies are listed in order of the Programme
Session Title:
Digital Health I (continued)
Digital Health (Session 1A cont.)
MONDAY, 7TH SEPTEMBER 2015 (DAY ONE)
Invited Speaker: Professor Hamish Fraser
Expanding access to quality healthcare in low and middle income countries: the role of open,
collaborative eHealth platforms
Dr. Fraser trained in General Medicine, Cardiology and Knowledge Based Systems at Edinburgh
University, and completed a fellowship in Clinical Decision Making and Cardiology at MIT and the New
England Medical Center, Boston, USA, and is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical
School. His work has led to the migration of medical informatics tools and expertise from high income
countries to some of the most challenging environments in low and middle income countries(LMICs). For
twelve years he was the Director of Informatics at the Healthcare NGO Partners In Health, Founded by
Paul Farmer and Jim Kim. There he led the development of web-based electronic medical record
systems, mobile health tools, data analysis tools, and pharmacy systems in Peru, Haiti, Rwanda, Malawi
and the Philippines. With colleagues in the US and South Africa he co-founded OpenMRS, a broad
international collaboration to develop a flexible, modular open source medical record system platform
for use in LMICs, now used in over 50 countries. He teaches course on Global eHealth at MIT, Leeds and
Edinburgh Universities. His main academic focus is in the evaluation of medical information systems in
developing countries.
Keynote and Invited Speaker Biographies
Biographies are listed in order of the Programme
Session Title:
Digital Health II
Invited Speaker: Dr Jim Briggs
Identifying at-risk patients from clinical data
Invited Speaker: Professor David Ford
Big health data for research, policy, planning and evaluation
Digital Health (Session 1B)
MONDAY, 7TH SEPTEMBER 2015 (DAY ONE)
Dr Jim Briggs is the Director of the Centre for Healthcare Modelling and Informatics (CHMI) at the
University of Portsmouth. He has been researching for over 30 years, the last 17 of which have been in
health informatics. His expertise encompasses software development (particularly of web-based
systems), clinical outcome modelling and eHealth. He has been principal investigator on approximately
25 externally funded research and development projects. He holds BA and DPhil degrees in Computer
Science from the University of York. In his spare time he is an international American football referee.
David Ford is Professor of Health Informatics and leads the Health Informatics Group at College of
Medicine in Swansea University, Wales, UK and directs the UK MS Register Project. David is Director of
the Administrative Data Research Centre (ADRC) Wales, an £8 million investment by the Economic and
Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of its Big Data initiative and is Deputy Director of the Centre for
Improvement in Population Health through E-records Research (CIPHER), part of the MRC’s Farr Institute
of Health Informatics Research. David is also Director of the eHealth Industries Innovation (ehi2) Centre,
developing links between academia, the NHS, and business within the UK and internationally. He is also
University Director of NHS Wales Informatics Research Laboratories, created through a collaboration
between Swansea University and NHS Wales Informatics Service. David is joint lead of the SAIL Databank,
an internationally recognised data linkage resource formed from a wide variety of routinely collected
data from across Wales. David is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts,
Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA) and past Chairman and a current Director of MediWales, a
membership organisation representing the medical technology sector of Wales.
Invited Speaker: Dr Bill Nailon
Improving Radiotherapy using Informatics and Image Analysis
Dr Nailon currently leads the Radiotherapy Physics, Image Analysis and Cancer Informatics group at the
Department of Oncology Physics, Edinburgh (http://www.oncphys.ed.ac.uk/research/). He is a state
registered NHS Clinical Scientist and Honorary Fellow in the College of Science and Engineering at the
University of Edinburgh. He has experience of developing medical imaging algorithms for research and
clinical use and is currently working on techniques for improving radiotherapy as part of a multidisciplinary team. He is part of the team on the 5-year, £5.2M EPSRC project called IMPACT, which will
develop new approaches to cancer treatment using implanted smart sensors, and the €12M EU project
that is developing tools for detection, traceability, triage & individual monitoring of victims after a mass
chemical, biological, radiological & nuclear contamination and/or exposure.
Keynote and Invited Speaker Biographies
Biographies are listed in order of the Programme
Regenerative Devices (Session 1A)
Regenerative Devices; Orthopaedic applications
Keynote Speaker: Professor Andrew McCaskie
Regenerative Strategies in Orthopaedic Surgery
Professor McCaskie is an orthopaedic surgeon with an interest in lower limb surgery e.g. hip
arthroscopy and related research. His research aims to develop innovative solutions, particularly
regenerative, for patient benefit in musculoskeletal disease. One focus is Osteoarthritis (OA), which
affects around 8 million people in the UK alone. The research encompasses a greater understanding of
the causes of musculoskeletal disease and the mechanisms of action of therapy. He is the Director of
the Arthritis Research UK Tissue Engineering Centre. The £6 million Centre is based at four sites:
Newcastle University, the University of Aberdeen, Keele University/the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt
Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Oswestry and the University of York. Funded by a core grant of £2.4
million over five years from Arthritis Research UK with a further £3.4 million pledged by the four
participating universities, the centre brings together leading clinicians, engineers and biologists from
research and clinical groups. The aim and potential clinical impact is to treat early osteoarthritis by
introducing stem cells into damaged joints in conjunction with existing surgical procedures. Prof
McCaskie leads the Smart Step consortium (£1.1M) as part of Stage II UK Regenerative Medicine
Platform. The aim is to develop cell-free approaches to Osteoarthritis and establish a translational
pipeline for their development. He also facilitates Clinical Engagement as part of the Centre for
Innovative Manufacturing in Medical Devices (MeDe) led by Leeds University.
Session Title:
Regenerative Devices (Session 1B)
MONDAY, 7TH SEPTEMBER 2015 (DAY ONE)
Session Title:
Regenerative Devices; Non-Orthopaedic applications
Keynote Speaker: Professor Rachel Williams
Biomaterials and their optimisation for the treatment of vision loss
I am a professor of ophthalmic bioengineering with over 20 years of experience in the design and
development of advanced materials for medical applications. My expertise lies particularly in the
design and characterisation of the bulk and surface properties of materials and how to modify them to
optimise the properties for a specific application. Over the years I have led cross-disciplinary research
projects on tailoring the surface properties of materials to control cellular responses. Within the
Department of Eye and Vision Science I am research theme leader for Ophthalmic Bioengineering. I
have been leading research on strategies to develop innovative ways to modify materials and their
surfaces to treat sight threatening conditions such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD),
cataracts and retinal detachment. I have recently been awarded a Fellowship by the EPSRC on Building
Advanced Materials to Treat Vision Loss under the Engineering Fellowships for Growth scheme.
Keynote and Invited Speaker Biographies
Careers, Outreach and Policy (Session 1A)
Session Title:
The Gutsy Way to Manage Your Career
10 Strategies that Will Set You Apart
Ruth Winden is an international Career Management Coach and one of only 40 certified Social Media
Career Strategists in the world. Ruth founded her company, Careers Enhanced Ltd, to work in
partnership with innovative organisations which recognise the importance of structured career
development opportunities for their staff. All these organisations now benefit from employing staff
with increased levels of job satisfaction, engagement, retention and productivity.
Ruth is an enthusiastic collaborator, learner, and innovator. She engages with top recruiters, career
colleagues and thought leaders in her industry so she can best support her clients. Ruth serves on the
Advisory Board of the US Think Tank, Career Thought Leaders. In 2013, she was elected onto the
Professional Standards Committee for the UK’s Career Development Institute, to represent
independent career practitioners and talent management professionals. Here she champions a
stringent, robust, modern accreditation process that ensures career professionals provide high quality
support for individuals and organisations.
Ruth is a regular speaker at conferences in academia, for professional associations like CIPD, ACPI and
CDI, and at entrepreneurship events in the North East. She has contributed to leading career
publications on career management, social media, networking and job search strategies, such as John
Lees’ latest publications, The Interview Expert and Just the JOB!, as well as the online Guardian Careers
blog and the Yahoo Finance portal. Ruth shares her expertise at careerbuilder.co.uk and has been
called a rather entertaining guest on BBC Radio Tees.
Session Title:
Careers, Outreach and Policy (Session 1B)
MONDAY, 7TH SEPTEMBER 2015 (DAY ONE)
Biographies are listed in order of the Programme
Navigating the maze: design, development and adoption of
medical innovation
Keynote Speaker: Dr Eric Mayes, CEO, Endomag
The Challenges of Successful Device Translation
Dr Eric Mayes is CEO of Endomag and has nearly two decades of experience in leading materials
technology companies. Since joining Endomag in 2010 he has led its rapid development and
commercialisation, achieving triple-digit revenue growth over the past three years.
Eric’s executive roles in materials technology companies include serving as Director of Commercial
Development for Cambridge Display Technology (CDT) that was sold to Sumitomo Chemical in 2007 for
$285m. Prior to CDT, he served as CEO of NanoMagnetics that developed high performance materials
for the data storage industry. He was named the Royal Society of Chemistry’s “Entrepreneur of the
Year 2003” for his founding role in NanoMagnetics.
Eric lectures internationally on nanomaterials commercialisation and technology entrepreneurship. A
US-UK dual national, he holds a BSc in Physics from Arkansas State University and a PhD in Chemistry
from the University of Bath. Eric is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Keynote and Invited Speaker Biographies
Biographies are listed in order of the Programme
Session Title:
Osteoarthritis – novel treatments
Osteoarthritis (Session 1A)
Academic in Musculoskeletal Science and Honorary Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon, Trauma and
Orthopaedics. Director of Training, NW Thames Higher Surgical Rotation in Trauma and Orthopaedics
Mr Gupte has clinical and research interests in the prevention and management of early osteoarthritis,
sports knee injuries, knee ligament and meniscal biomechanics. As a former professional cricketer, he
has added insight into the unique needs of sportsmen in returning to sport after injury.
Session Title:
Osteoarthritis – Tissue Characterisation and Tissue Repair
Keynote Speaker: Captain David Henson MBE
Musculoskeletal wear and tear – osteoarthritis isn’t the only concern
Osteoarthritis (Session 1B)
TUESDAY, 8TH SEPTEMBER 2015 (DAY TWO)
Keynote Speaker: Mr (Dr) Chinmay Gupte
The challenge of early OA from trauma/meniscal injury
Dave Henson is a part-time musculoskeletal researcher and part-time athlete. A double amputee,
David Henson captained the British team at the inaugural Invictus Games in London
(http://invictusgames.org/), and is now training for selection for the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de
Janeiro. As a musculoskeletal biomechanics researcher, Dave is working on optimising musculoskeletal
mechanics for performance and to reduce long-term injury for amputees and his talk will include a
personal view of the needs of the young, athletic amputee cohort.
Keynote and Invited Speaker Biographies
Imaging, Modelling and Devices (Session 1A)
Imaging, Modelling and Devices (Session 1B)
TUESDAY, 8TH SEPTEMBER 2015 (DAY TWO)
Biographies are listed in order of the Programme
Session Title:
Modelling and Devices
Keynote Speaker: Professor Tobias Schaeffter
MR-Guided treatment of cardiac Arrhythmia
Prof Tobias Schaeffter is Head of Division, Medical Physics and Metrological Information Technology at
Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, PTB and formerly Head of Biomedical Engineering at the
Division of Imagine Science & Biomedical Engineering in King’s College London. He studied electrical
engineering in Berlin and did his PhD in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at University Bremen. After
working with Philips Research Laboratories in Hamburg he joined King’s. His interests lie in the
investigation of novel MR-techniques for cardiac, interventional and quantitative MRI and in particular,
investigation of novel MR-techniques for 4D-acquisitions and motion modelling. His research focuses
on rapid translation of new methodology into the clinic practice to evaluate benefit for the patient.
Session Title:
Imaging
Keynote Speaker: Professor Alexander Hammers
PET-MR: Twice the trouble, twice the fun
Alexander Hammers is Professor (Honorary Consultant) of Imaging and Neuroscience and Head of the
PET Centre at King’s College London, UK. He is a neurologist by training and his clinical interest lies in
the epilepsies. His research area is medical imaging, in particular functional neuroimaging with
quantified PET, and structural neuroimaging using MRI. Over the past 15 years, his group has created a
large manually annotated brain atlas database and methods to automatically segment unseen brains.
This is now being applied to detect subtle abnormalities which cannot be detected visually. In the
domain of quantitative ligand PET, innovative work has included elucidation of the role of heterotopic
neurons in the white matter in the epilepsies; the workup of novel tracers; and the demonstration of
time-variant receptor concentration changes following seizures and other stimuli. The main areas of
application of the methods developed are the pre-surgical evaluation in focal epilepsies and, more
recently, neurodegenerative diseases. A recent interest is the development of simultaneous MRI-PET.
The ultimate goal of these endeavours is to benefit individual patients through the clinical application
of neuroscience.
Keynote and Invited Speaker Biographies
Biographies are listed in order of the Programme
Medical and Bioengineering (Session 1A)
Medical and Bioengineering 1
Keynote Speaker: Professor Damien Lacroix
Modelling the bioreactor environment for tissue engineering – a multiscale approach
Damien Lacroix is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering
at the University of Sheffield. His main expertise is on the computational modelling of
mechanobiological processes at cell, tissue and organ interfaces and their interactions with biomedical
devices. Lacroix has received around £7M in the last 5 years in European and EPSRC funding. He
coordinated the only world-wide multi scale patient specific mechanobiological project focused on the
lumbar spine (MySpine). He is also the recipient of the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant
on multi-scale simulations on bone tissue engineering. He is the PI of an ESPRC Frontier Engineering
Award on the Individualised Multi-scale Simulation of the Musculoskeletal System. Lacroix has received
the 2010 European Society for Biomaterials Jean Leray Award as recognition of his contribution to the
field. As past-President of the European Society of Biomechanics (2010- 2012), Lacroix is a leading
figure in biomedical engineering.
Session Title:
Medical and Bioengineering (Session 1B)
TUESDAY, 8TH SEPTEMBER 2015 (DAY TWO)
Session Title:
Medical and Bioengineering 2
Keynote Speaker: Professor Peter Weinberg
Atherosclerosis: Location, Location Location
Professor Peter Weinberg won a scholarship to read Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge
and obtained his PhD at Imperial College London under the supervision of Professor Colin Caro. After
being awarded a Lady Davis Fellowship in the Department of Bioengineering at the Technion, Israel,
and further postdoctoral studies at Imperial, he was appointed Lecturer and then Reader in the School
of Animal and Microbial Sciences, University of Reading. In 2004, he returned to Imperial as a Reader in
the Department of Bioengineering, and was appointed Professor of Cardiovascular Mechanics there in
2007. He was Director of Research for 8 years. He has served on the committees of various scientific
societies and funding bodies; he chaired the Bioengineering Society for 3 years, He has supervised over
50 Fellows, Research Assistants, Technicians and PhD students. His work is chiefly concerned with the
development of atherosclerosis.
Keynote and Invited Speaker Biographies
Biographies are listed in order of the Programme
The Delivery of Regenerative Medicine (Session 1A)
TUESDAY, 8TH SEPTEMBER 2015 (DAY TWO)
Session Title:
Cells and Scaffolds
Keynote Speaker: Professor Anthony Hollander
Biography details to follow
Professor Hollander graduated with a 1st Class degree in Pharmacology from The University of Bath and
a PhD in Pathology from the University of Bristol. He then spent three years at an internationally
renowned cartilage laboratory at McGill University in Montreal before returning to the UK to take up
an Arthritis Research UK Fellowship and a Lectureship at The University of Sheffield. He was appointed
as the Arthritis Research UK Professor of Rheumatology and Tissue Engineering at the University of
Bristol in September 2000 and he was Head of The School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine in Bristol
from 2009 - 2013. He was appointed as Head of The Institute of Integrative Biology and Professor of
Stem Cell Biology at The University of Liverpool in June 2014.
Invited Speaker: Mohsen Miraftab
Development and assessment of small diameter prosthetic vascular grafts with specially designed
internal scaffold structure
Mohsen has over 80 refereed and conference publications and has authored, co-authored and edited
at least 8 text books in medical textile area as well as technical textile field. He is an editorial member
of the Journal of Industrial Textiles as well as a referee member of Carbohydrate Polymer Journal.
Mohsen currently leads the IMRI flagship M.Sc. programme in Advanced Materials and carries out
regular consultancy work for local and national industry. He also leads the management and technical
development of the UK section of a prestigious Marie Currie European consortium project on Tendon
Regeneration.
Keynote and Invited Speaker Biographies
Biographies are listed in order of the Programme
Session Title:
Processing and Delivery of Cell-based Therapies
The Delivery of Regenerative Medicine (Session 1B)
Keynote Speaker: John Ferris
Challenges in Commercializing Regenerative Medicine
John Ferris is employed by Cytori Therapeutics, a leading regenerative medicine company based in San
Diego, California. He has served as Director of European Business Development since 2006. The main
responsibilities of the role include the commercialization of Cytori’s Celution® system for the isolation
and concentration of adipose derived regenerative cells. The Celution system is CE marked for use in a
wide range of clinical indications including plastic and reconstructive surgery, wound healing and the
treatment of soft tissue wasting disorders. He has worked in the medical industry since 1983 in
different sales and marketing positions starting in the pharmaceutical industry. Since 1987 he has been
in the medical device sector, including 12 years in orthopaedics with DePuy International. He is a
British national and earned a B.A. (Honours) from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1979. He
currently lives in North Yorkshire.
Invited Speaker: Melanie Coathup
Augmenting Implant Fixation Using Stem Cells
Melanie qualified in Medical Cell Biology from the University of Liverpool in 1992. She then furthered
her knowledge with a PhD in implant fixation, supervised by Professor Gordon Blunn, which she
completed at the John Scales Centre for Biomedical Engineering, Institute of Orthopaedics and
Musculoskeletal Science, University College London in 1999. She became a lecturer at UCL in 2001
followed by a senior lecturer, and recently became Head of the Centre for Tissue and Cell
Research. For the past 20 years, Melanie has researched orthopaedic implant fixation and bone
regeneration, focussing on topics that include biomaterials, stem cells, the design and follow-up of
implants and bone graft substitute materials. The Institute is co-located with the Royal National
Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore and this environment facilitates her collaboration with clinicians,
which allows Melanie to investigate and apply science with a view of improving the treatment and care
of patients.