Daniel Howard

Daniel joined the Tissue Engineering group after completing a Ph.D. in orthopaedic tissue engineering at the University of Southampton. Daniel is working on the osteogenic differentiation of novel cell encapsulated scaffolds, developed here at the University of Nottingham.

Qingpu Hou

Qingpu’s research interests are in the design and development of cell/drug delivery carriers and surface engineering of biomaterials. Currently he is working on a project in the fabrication of a novel drug delivery device funded by the EPSRC.

Mieke Heyde

Mieke received her Bachelor (1995) and Masters (1997) degree in Chemistry from Ghent University, Belgium. After working for a year on a project at the same university she started a PhD in polymer chemistry. She first joined the Tissue Engineering Group in 2002 as part of a Marie Curie Fellowship. Now she’s working as a post doc developing a non-viral gene delivery system for tissue engineering.

Rob Thomas

Rob graduated from Nottingham University with a MPharm degree in Pharmacy in 2001. He then spent a year completing his pre-registration training in Kent with Pfizer Global R&D and Kent and Canterbury hospital, and qualified as a MRPharmS in 2002. He joined the Tissue Engineering group in September 2002 researching the co-culture and subsequent spheroid formation of hepatic stellate cells and hepatocytes, which has been shown to prolong liver specific function of hepatocytes in vitro.

Lisa Worrall

Lisa attained a BSc from Reading University in Psychology and Zoology in 2001. Continuing from her part time lab work in a Biochemistry laboratory, she went on to become a research assistant in the toxicology lab of the Royal Berkshire Hospital. She then joined the Tissue Engineering group in September 2002.

Lisa’s postgraduate research project was a collaboration with the Cancer Research Laboratories at Nottingham University to create a realistic three-dimensional tumour model in vitro for drug screening, to reduce the use of animal testing, and to enhance our knowledge of tumour pathology. Lisa is now applying her expertise in 3D cell culture to stem cell culture within the group.

Patrick Ginty

Patrick graduated from Liverpool John Moores University in 2001 with a BSc (Hons) in Applied Biology. He then went on to attain an MSc with distinction in Applied Biomolecular Technology from the University of Nottingham in 2001.

Patrick started his research within the Tissue Engineering group in 2002, under the joint supervision of Professors Kevin Shakesheff (Pharmacy) and Steve Howdle (Chemistry). His project involved working on a BBSRC funded project, utilising a novel method of seeding polymer scaffolds with mammalian cells for three-dimensional tissue regeneration. This method involved the use of supercritical C02 technologies which he is continuing to work with in his postdoctoral research to generate a dual-release growth factor scaffold for tissue engineering.

Hongyun Tai

Hongyun graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University with a BSc and MSc in Polymer Science in 1990 and 1993 respectively. On completion of her MSc, she worked in the R&D department of the Shanghai Institute of Organofluorine Materials. From 2002 to 2005, she undertook her PhD studies within the Polymers, Biomaterials and Supercritical Fluids group at the University of Nottingham working on polymerisation reactions of fluorinated vinyl monomers in scCO2. In September 2005, she commenced her postdoctoral research work on Tissue Engineering with Professor Steve Howdle (School of Chemistry) and Professor Kevin Shakesheff (School of Pharmacy).