Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group

Dr Gerard Cummins (he/him) is an assistant professor from the School of Engineering in the University of Birmingham. His research lies in the use of his primary research is focused on the use of microfabrication to create novel miniaturised implanted or ingestible medical devices for diagnostic or therapeutic applications and the advancement of these devices along the translational pipeline.

Shane Browne (RCSI) is a lecturer in Anatomy and Regenerative Medicine. He graduated with a Bachelors of Biomedical Engineering from the University of Galway and completed his Ph.D. in CÚRAM. After completing his doctoral studies he pursued postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. His group focuses on the development of bioinspired, semisynthetic biomaterials as matrices for therapeutic delivery and tissue repair, with a particular interest in vascularisation of ischemic tissues.

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.

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.

Dr Lisa Hill is an Assistant Professor/lecturer in Ocular Disease and Therapeutics. Lisa is conducting pioneering research in the fields of extracellular matrix biology, ocular disease and therapeutics. Over the last decade, she has focussed on understanding how inflammation and dysfunctions in extracellular matrix can lead to blinding diseases including glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration and uveitis. This has led to her identifying and developing new immuno- and anti-scarring therapies to treat blinding diseases and she has developed and patented technologies used for delivering drugs into the eye.

Dr Eric Hill is the external advisor of equality diversity and inclusion committee. His research interests include the development of tissue engineering strategies to model stem cell behaviour in the development of neuronal networks and also during neurodegeneration. Eric is currently engaged in developing stem cell derived models of the CNS in an attempt to study complex cellular interactions that occur in development and disease.

Emma Lardner is the secretary of equality diversity and inclusion committee. Emma is the Operations Manager for the Healthcare Technologies Institute at the University of Birmingham and supports the LifETIME CDT with Birmingham administration.

Hannah Williamson is the 2020 CDT student representative from the University of Birmingham. Hannah is researching on-demand sensors for cell therapy bioprocessing.

Omolola Ajayi is the 2021 CDT student representative from University of Glasgow. Omolola is researching engineered microenvironments for multiscale mechanobiology of breast cancer.

Imen Boumar is the 2022 CDT student representative from University of Birmingham. Imen is researching screen-printed nanobody switchable sensors for cell therapy process monitoring.