Sustainability Working Group

Dr David France is a Lecturer in the School of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow. His research is grounded in the idea that molecules in isolation don’t serve any function, but that interactions with larger systems can generate important effects. The systems he is most interested in are biological, and therefore carbon based, the original definition of the‌ term “organic”.

Eoghan received his PhD from the University of Limerick in 2015 under the supervision of Prof Michael Walsh. He was subsequently awarded a Marie Curie Global Fellowship to transition his expertise from tissue characterisation to tissue engineering and modelling at the University of Pittsburgh and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. He was then awarded a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Fellowship to characterise cancerous tissue at Imperial College London. Eoghan is also the co-founder of the start-up company Class Medical which was spun out of UL to commercialise a patented device that improves urinary catheter safety. Eoghan is the recipient of an ERC Starting Grant aimed at addressing male infertility through developing representative preclinical models of the human testes.

Prof. FitzGerald is a Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering whose primary research focus is Multiple Sclerosis. Over the last six years, she has developed an interest and expertise in the area of lab sustainability. In 2019 she led the CÚRAM lab to be the first in Europe to gain Green Lab Certification from My Green Lab. This led to an invitation to chair SEAI’s working group for public sector labs and the launch on Earth Day 2022 of Irish Green Labs. Una hopes to encourage and incentivise the working group to find their own lab greening climate action and collectively, to scale their impact teaching and research labs!

Dr Eirini Theodosiou is a Senior Lecturer in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at Aston University. Her research interests include the design of tailored materials and manufacturing processes for high value biotherapeutics, advanced therapy medicinal products and animal stem cells. These new bioprocessing tools aim to accelerate the transition ‘from bench to bedside’, and ‘from bench to fork’, reaching the end user faster and at reduced costs.

Emma is the Operations Manager for the Healthcare Technologies Institute at the University of Birmingham and supports the LifETIME CDT with Birmingham administration.

Adam Efrat is the 2021 CDT student representative from the University of Birmingham. Adam is researching bioprocess development for production of 3D tissues to underpin creation of engineered meat.

Lineta Stonkute is the 2023 CDT student representative from the University of Glasgow. Lineta is researching synthesis and design of new hydrogels for nerve repair. She has previously worked in both small academic and large industry laboratories which has given her exposure to how much waste is generated by laboratory work. She strongly believes that there are many measures that can be taken to reduce carbon footprint produced by research and would like to become part of the solution to creating greener and more sustainable working environment.

Louis Hutchings is the 2023 CDT student representative from Aston University. Louis is researching 3D printing of edible biomimetic scaffolds for the engineering of animal muscle tissue.