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Postdoctoral

Team Profiles

Adam Collins

Adam Collins

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER

Adam obtained his PhD from University of Galway in 2015. His PhD examined the interaction between femtosecond laser pulses and flexible glass substrates, and developed laser manufacturing processes for display and photovoltaic markets. Returning after 4 years in industry, Adam is developing printed sensor technology for use in a smart woundcare device. In addition the value chain and technology roadmap for such a device is being explored. The project is supervised by Prof. Georgina Gethin and Prof. Gerard O'Connor.

Anna Hobbins

Anna Hobbins

Postdoctoral Researcher

Dr Anna Hobbins is a postdoctoral researcher working on economic evaluation of medical devices at CÚRAM and Health Economics & Policy Analysis Centre University of Galway. She completed her PhD in Queen’s University Belfast which involved producing the Irish “value set”, “population norms” using the EQ-5D-5L system. The output from Anna’s work, which has involved collaboration with colleagues across multiple disciplines, has been published in a range of leading national and international peer-reviewed journals.

Anneke Verbruggen

Anneke Verbruggen

Postdoctoral Researcher

Qualifications: PhD, Masters and Bachelors in Biomedical Engineering. Research Area: Mechanobiology, Metastasis, Medical Device technology, computational modelling. CURAM project: Optimising novel experimental and computational models to aid in the development of medical device technologies designed by Stryker (Cork). Specifically investigating responses of soft tissue to the cutting action of RF Electrosurgical Instruments and ultrasonic debridement. Funded by CURAM and Stryker.

Brian FitzGibbon

Brian FitzGibbon

Postdoctoral Researcher

Brian has a B.E. in Biomedical Engineering from University of Galway. His PhD research focused on the development of computational models to predict arterial dissection. Brian's current work is focused on the development of novel cohesive zone models to predict failure model failure of medical devices and biological tissues. He is supervised by Dr Patrick McGarry.

Cansu Sahin

Cansu Sahin

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER

Cansu obtained her PhD in Histology and Embryology from the Ankara Yildirim Beyazit University Faculty of Medicine in Türkiye. Her research focused on investigating the expressions and functions of ubiquitin proteasome system proteins in human placenta. She is currently working under the supervision of Dr. Karen Doyle on the characteristics of thrombi from acute ischemic stroke patients, using a mix of histological and immunohistochemical techniques. Her main role is to involve the management and analysis of the database of clot pathology, exploring the correlation of clot characteristics with clinical characteristics, and electrical impedance analysis.

Clara Sanz Nogués

Clara Sanz Nogués

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER

Clara has a BSc Biotechnology from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain), a MSc in Clinical Research from NUI Galway, and a PhD form University of Galway. Her research focuses on developing novel mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC)-based therapies for treating diabetic complications. Clara’s current project at CÚRAM aims to develop a novel tissue engineered construct using umbilical cord MSCs for treating non-healing wound ulcers in diabetic patients. Her supervisors are Prof Timothy O’Brien and Dr Dimitrios Zeugolis.

David Keane

David Keane

Postdoctoral Researcher

David has a background in medical physics with 15 years in the NHS as a registered Clinical Scientist. His research focuses on technology in haemodialysis, including a PhD on measurement of fluid status. Clinically, he supported clinical measurement and data usage in the renal unit and had leadership positions in the UK Kidney Association. David will be working with CÚRAM Co-PI Prof. Matt Griffin, developing clinical trial methodology and infrastructure as part of the Clinical Translation Support team.

Eimear Wallace

Eimear Wallace

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER

Eimear obtained her with BSc (Hons) in Biomedical Science specialising in Pharmacology and MSc (Hons) in Regenerative Medicine from University of Galway. During her PhD, Eimear developed a soft robotic drug delivery system for controlled release of VEGF. Her research interests include regenerative medicine, medical devices, and drug delivery. At CÚRAM Eimear is working with Professor Garry Duffy of University of Galway to develop an active delivery device to improve glioblastoma treatment.

Enda Murphy

Enda Murphy

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE

Enda obtained a BSc in Sports Science and Health (1st class honours) from Dublin City University in 2014. He worked as a Senior Technical Officer in the School of Health and Human Performance there from 2014 - 2022, while also completing a PhD on the role of exercise intensity and muscle contraction frequency in modulating exercise response. At CÚRAM, he will investigate the relevance of physiological ketosis as an indicator of health improvements in patients with obesity and related metabolic disorders.

Giriprasath Ramanathan

Giriprasath Ramanathan

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER

Giriprasath obtained his PhD in 2017 from Anna University, Chennai, India. His research focused on the fabrication and characterization of biomaterials using different techniques for skin and bone tissue engineering application. He was awarded Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Individual Fellowship (IF) during his postdoc at KU leuven, Belgium. His research area is in the development of hydrogels for Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) in CURAM, under the supervision of Dr. Yury Rochev & Dr. Abhay Pandit.

Hellebore Fass

Hellebore Fass

Postdoctoral Researcher

Dr T. Hellebore Fass is an ingenuitive research engineer with a focus on medical technology, robotics and self-assembly. Her PhD research was on the subject of self-folding magnetic tools for minimally invasive surgery, to lay the groundwork for a new class of surgery tools. At the present she is implementing a guidance system for colonoscopies using the ANSER electromagnetic Tracking System in the Biomedical research laboratory of the University College Cork under Prof. Padraig Cantillon-Murphy

James O'Connor

James O'Connor

Postdoctoral Researcher

James received a BSc in Biotechnology from DCU and a BM BS from UL. His research interests include thoracic surgery, airway disease and regenerative medicine. James will be working on tracheal regeneration and tissue engineering under the supervision of Professor Karen Redmond and Professor Sally-Ann Cryan in conjunction with the Tissue Engineering Group in RCSI.

Joan Martí Muñoz

Joan Martí Muñoz

Postdoctoral Researcher

Joan received his PhD in Material Science and Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (Barcelona, Spain). His research was focused on synthetic scaffolds to induce vascularization in hard-to-heal wounds. Then, Joan joined CÚRAM as part of the MedTrain Program where he developed Galectin-3 inhibitory hydrogels under the supervision of Prof. Abhay Pandit. Currently, Joan has been awarded the prestigious Individual (Global) Marie Curie Action in an international collaboration with Yale University (EEUU) under the supervision of Prof. Abhay Pandit and Prof. Naftali Kaminski, MD (Yale) to investigate the effects of this novel Galectin-3 inhibitor hydrogels in lung Fibrosis.

Juan Fandiño

Juan Fandiño

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER

Juan obtained his B.Sc. in Biology, M.Sc. in Nutrition and PhD in Endocrinology from the University of Vigo. His PhD research was focused on the study of the effect of a GLP-1 receptor agonist in an animal model of lung fibrosis. His research interests are the study of novel therapies for the treatment of pulmonary diseases. At CÚRAM, Juan is working in a preclinical testing of iPS-derived MSCs in animal models of bacterial and viral ARDS under the supervision of Dr. Daniel O’Toole and Prof. John Laffey.

Juan Uribe-Gomez

Juan Uribe-Gomez

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER

Juan obtained his B.Sc. in chemistry, M.Sc. in organic synthesis from Universidad Nacional de Colombia and his PhD in polymer science from the University of Bayreuth. His PhD research was focused on the synthesis, characterization, processing, and biological assessment of polyurethanes. At CÚRAM, Juan is working in biomaterials database BiomatDB under the supervision of Prof. Abhay Pandit.

Katarzyna Mnich

Katarzyna Mnich

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER

Katarzyna Mnich obtained her PhD in Biochemistry from University of Galway. Her research is focused on a better understanding of how tumor cells survive stress in order to identify better therapeutic strategies. Currently, she is working under the supervision of Prof. Adrienne Gorman on the IRE1 inhibitor development and delivery system for the more efficient treatment of glioblastoma.

Kieran Joyce

Kieran Joyce

Postdoctoral Researcher

Kieran graduated with a Bachelor of Medical Sciences as part of an integrated MB PhD program in NUI Galway. He completed his PhD, investigating the glycoprofile of the intervertebral disc in degeneration under the supervision of Prof. Abhay Pandit. An intern doctor at University Hospital Galway and postdoctoral researcher at University of Galway, Kieran's postdoctoral research focuses on the development of biomaterial-based therapies in intervertebral disc degeneration.

Kishor Das

Kishor Das

Postdoctoral Researcher

Dr. Das obtained his PhD in Biostatistics from University of Galway. His research is focused on analysing high-dimensional data using Mixed-effects Modelling framework and Functional Data Analysis. His current work at CÚRAM is focused on developing multivariate adaptive reference region, providing statistical supports to CÚRAM researchers, and facilitating training and workshops on statistical methodologies and statistical software R. He is supervised by Professor John Newell and Dr. Davood Roshan.

Krittish Roy

Krittish Roy

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER

Krittish completed his PhD from the Department of Chemistry, Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700032. He has expertise in inorganic synthesis, MOF synthesis, graphene synthesis, thin and thick film preparation, nanofiber preparation through electrospinning technique, energy harvesting devices, device fabrication. He has published nearly 15 articles to date in different reputed journals. In addition, he has presented his work in several national and international conferences. Krittish is enthusiastic about learning different tools to improve research contributions. His research is on biodegradable film preparation and coating for in-vivo application, supervised by Dr. Tofail Syed.

Muhammad Riaz ur Rehman

Muhammad Riaz ur Rehman

Postdoctoral Researcher

Muhammad Riaz ur Rehman obtained his PhD degree in Electronic and Electrical Engineering from Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea in 2020. He has 10 years industry experience related to design of Software Defined Radios and embedded system design. His area of interest are design of digital IC and embedded systems based on FPGA and microcontroller. Currently developing an electronic embedded system for powering and communication with an implantable biosensor. He is supervised by Dr William Wijns and Dr Atif Shahzad.

Niamh Hynes

Niamh Hynes

Postdoctoral Researcher

Ms Niamh Hynes is a Senior Registrar in Vascular & Endovascular Surgery at the Galway Clinic, Honorary Clinical Lecturer in Endovascular Surgery at the University of Galway, and co-founder of the Western Vascular Institute (WVI), an international vascular research foundation. Her areas of interest are clinical vascular research, biomedical engineering and vascular medical device design.

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Pravin Bhattarai

Pravin Bhattarai

Postdoctoral Researcher

Pravin Bhattarai completed his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Peking University, China (2019). He worked on the near-infrared fluorescent molecular probes-based phototherapy and imaging for cancer theranostics. After PhD, he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Biophotonics at Phutung Research Institute, Nepal. Currently, at CÚRAM he plans to work on the design of piezoelectric energy scavenging biomaterials for low power biomedical applications under Dr. Manus Biggs.

Rashmi Ramakrishnan

Rashmi Ramakrishnan

Postdoctoral Researcher

Rashmi received her PhD in Biological Sciences (Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine) in 2020 from Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, India. She also holds an MPhil in Biomedical Technology and an MSc in Medical Biochemistry. Her research interest focuses on the application of stem cells, biomaterials, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine towards development of cost-effective, scalable biomedical therapeutics and devices for tissue repair. Currently at CURAM, she is working as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr Andrew Daly’s group on an industry-funded project to investigate new in vitro models for optimization of compatibility tests for extracellular matrix-based biomaterials.

Rumi Khandelia

Rumi Khandelia

Postdoctoral Researcher

Rumi did her PhD in Chemistry (specialisation - Nanomedicine) from IIT Guwahati (IITG), India and her postdoc from IITG and IIT Genova, Italy. She worked in the Pharmaceutical industry as senior manager for 2.5 years as part of the analytical team and worked on new product development. Currently, she is working as a Marie Curie Fellow in UCD, Ireland under Prof. David Brayden on the project - development of protein nanoparticles for intra-articular delivery of an inflammatory drug to treat osteoarthritis.

Sahil Malhotra

Sahil Malhotra

Postdoctoral Researcher

Sahil obtained a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Indian Institute of technology Delhi. His research focused on engineering Red Blood Cells membrane to develop biocompatible nanovesicles for biomedical applications. After completing his PhD, Sahil worked as a scientist with Biocon, one of the leading global brands in Biopharmaceuticals, where he worked on physico-chemical characterization of biosimilars. He is currently working on an SFI and Marie-Curie Action co-funded project under the supervision of Prof. David Brayden at UCD wherein he will develop a Mucoadhesive Buccal patch for systemic delivery of anti-cancer peptide drugs.

Seán McCarthy

Seán McCarthy

Postdoctoral Researcher

Seán obtained his PhD from University College Dublin. His research interests include genomics and gene therapy in the area of acute respiratory distress syndrome and sepsis. At CÚRAM, Seán is examining high efficacy throughput screening of vehicles for mRNA delivery to the lung in ARDS with Dr Daniel O’Toole and Prof. John Laffey.