Professor Kevin Shakesheff, University of Nottingham

Director

Prof Molly Stevens, Imperial College London

Director

Molly Stevens is Professor of Biomedical Materials and Regenerative Medicine and the Research Director for Biomedical Material Sciences in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College. She graduated from Bath University and was awarded a PhD from the University of Nottingham in 2001. Molly conducted post-doctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ahead of joining Imperial in 2004.

Molly’s research uses transformative bioengineering approaches to overcome severe limitations in current materials in biosensing and regenerative medicine. A key focus is on understanding and engineering the biomaterial interface using innovative designs and state of the art materials characterisation methods and using highly multidisciplinary approaches from bioengineers, material scientists, chemists, surgeons and biologists.

Abdulrahman BakiI have joined Prof Kevin Shakesheff tissue engineering group as a PhD student in October 2012 to work on injectable scaffolds for soft tissue applications. I have received my BSC in Pharmacy and MSC in Biomedical Engineering from University of Aleppo, Syria. My research aim is to develop a cell delivery system with tunable properties for tissue repair applications. My current approaches involve using different surface modification techniques to prepare injectable hydrogel coated polymeric microspheres with controllable mechanical properties. The system can be tuned by controlling hydrogel elasticity to mimic microenvironment properties of targeted tissues and directs stem cell differentiation to specific cell lineages. This system would help clinicians to effectively deliver stem cells with predetermined niche properties for different tissue repair applications.