2025 Materials for Medical Devices workshop

Carsten Werner is Professor for Biofunctional Polymer Materials at TU Dresden and Scientific Director of the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden (IPF), Germany. After receiving a diploma in chemistry (University of Würzburg) and a doctoral degree in physical chemistry (TU Dresden) in 1999, he established a biomaterials program at IPF and held an Adjunct Professorship at the Institute of Biomaterials of the University of Toronto, Canada (2000-2018). Since 2008 he is a full professor at the Faculty of Chemistry and the Center of Regenerative Therapies, since 2019 he is also member of the Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life and the Else Kröner Fresenius Center of Digital Health at TU Dresden. Research of the Werner Lab targets the exploration of living matter using physical and materials science methodologies, new biomimicry design approaches to functional materials and the translation of biomaterials technologies. Recent work concerned electrosurface phenomena, bioadhesion, hemocompatibility of biomaterials as well as cell-instructive hydrogel systems for tissue/disease models and regenerative therapies. Carsten Werner is elected member of the German National Academy of Science and Engineering and elected scientific member of the Leibniz Association. His research has been recognized with several awards, including the MaterialVital Award of the German Federal Ministry of Science and Education, and resulted in several patented technologies and spin-off companies.

Michael Monaghan is Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. His group’s primary research areas are in electroconductive biomaterials, cardiac tissue regeneration, and real-time imaging of extracellular matrix components and metabolism in differentiation and disease. He leads a number of interdisciplinary projects between other academic groups and industry ranging from immunometabolism, evaluation of fibrosis, and induced pluripotent stem cell derivitisation of cardiac organoids and resident immune cell populations. His expertise and knowledge of FLIM microscopy has been recognised through publication of studies in several internationally renowned journals and awarding of a Horizon Europe MSCA-doctoral network (2021) based on FLIM excellence where he is the lead coordinator. Most recently, he is the 2023 recipient of the TERMIS Robert Brown Early Career Investigator Award (2023), a European Research Council Consolidator Awardee (2023) and Science Foundation Ireland Frontier for the Future Laureate (2024).

Dietmar Zaiss studied Cell & Molecular Biology, in Germany at the Philipps University in Marburg and in the USA, at Syracuse University. He received his PhD in Cell Biology from the Humboldt University in Berlin / Germany, before he moved to the Lab of Tim Mosmann at the University of Rochester in Upstate New York, where he discovered that the EGF-like growth factor Amphiregulin is a Type-II cytokine, involved in worm rejection.
As a Group Leader at the University of Utrecht in The Netherlands, he then showed that Amphiregulin enhances regulatory T-cell function, and at the University of Edinburgh, where he held a faculty position from 2013 till 2023, he demonstrated that Amphiregulin is mediating its effect via the local activation of latent TGFβ complexes.
Since Fall 2021, he holds a professorship for Immune Cell Communication at the University of Regensburg in Germany and focuses his research on utilizing this knowledge for the development of novel therapeutic approaches to treat inflammation-associated diseases.

Dr Camarero-Espinosa is an Ikerbasque Fellow and PI at the POLYMAT institute where she stablished the BioSmarTE group in 2021. The group activities focus on the regeneration of complex tissues through the design of smart implantable scaffolds. This encompasses the functionalization of biomaterials, the exploitation of biofabrication techniques such as 3D (bio)printing, the design of stimuli responsive systems, the understanding of stem cell processes and their interaction with the immune system.
Dr. Camarero-Espinosa was educated at the University of the Basque Country (Spain) where she obtained her BSc. degree as Chemical Engineer and M.Sc. in Engineering of Advanced Materials. She moved to develop her doctoral studies at the Adolphe Merkle Institute (Fribourg, Switzerland). She obtained her PhD degree in 2015 in Polymer Chemistry and Bioengineering and was recognized with an award for an outstanding PhD thesis by the Swiss Chemical Society. After gaining an early post-doctoral  fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation, in 2015 she moved to Brisbane (Australia) to work at the AIBN Institute (Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, University of Queensland) where she continued her research in instructive biomaterial scaffolds and their interaction with stem cells. She then joined in 2017 the MERLN institute at Maastricht University (The Netherlands) where she focused her studies on the fabrication of 3D printed scaffolds for the regeneration of complex tissues.

Nick Lockyer is Professor of Physical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Manchester, UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a member of the Michael Barber Centre for Collaborative Mass Spectrometry. Over >25 years he has led instrumentation development, fundamental research and novel applications using mass spectrometry imaging, principally Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToF-SIMS).  Following PhD and PDRA positions in the Vickerman group, he was awarded a Leverhulme Special Research Fellowship in 2000 in ToF-SIMS imaging.  His group works in parallel on instrumental and fundamental advances and new applications of SIMS and complementary imaging mass spectrometry techniques through collaboration with industry, clinicians and academia.  He has published >100 papers, mostly on the development and application of ToF-SIMS for bioimaging.  H-index 42, >6500 citations (Google scholar).  Notable group achievements include the introduction of Au-cluster, C₆₀ and water-GCIB primary ion sources, the innovative J105 buncher-SIMS instrument, some of the earliest laser post-ionization studies, the first ToF-SIMS studies on cancer cells and the first 3D molecular SIMS image of a biological cell.  His group are currently exploring advances in multi-modal chemical imaging applied to societal grand challenges including food security, healthcare and energy storage.

Andrew graduated from the University of York with an MChem degree in 1999. His subsequent Ph.D. studies were conducted under the supervision of Prof. Vernon C. Gibson FRS at Imperial College, London, focused on metal catalysed co-ordination insertion polymerisation. Andrew undertook post-doctoral research first under the guidance of Prof. Robert M. Waymouth at Stanford University, California and then as a CIPMA post-doctoral fellow at IBM, San Jose, California under the supervision of Dr James L. Hedrick and Prof. Robert M. Waymouth. Andrew returned to the UK to take up a RCUK Fellowship in Nanotechnology in September 2005 before being appointed as an Assistant Professor in September 2006 and subsequently as an Associate Professor in September 2009 before being appointed as a Full Professor in June 2014. In January 2018, Andrew joined the School of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham as Professor of Chemistry.

Yves Bayon, PhD & MBA, is an employee of Medtronic – Sofradim Production as a Chief Scientist with +20 years of experience of Medical Devices development. He has since carried out various assignments, including the establishment of the porcine collagen production line, and the development of collagen-based medical devices for the repair or regeneration of soft tissues (i.e., Parietex™ Composite mesh and its derivatives with cumulative sales of over €1 billion). Since 2015, his missions have expanded with cross-functional activities across Medtronic's multiple divisions (e.g., cardiovascular, neurovascular, spine, ENT) and with activities going beyond biomaterials, in connection with the digitization of medical devices (e.g., AI-based solutions, e-health application). He is also part of the Research and Innovation committee and the Circular Economy working group of Medtech Europe and is a mentor of EIT Health.

Rob Stockman is Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Nottingham, working for >25 years on the synthesis of complex molecules of biological interest. He has > 100 papers in heterocyclic chemistry, synthetic strategy, synthetic methodology, monomer synthesis, natural product synthesis & diversity-oriented synthesis. He has wealth of experience in designing highly efficient routes to complex small molecules, and has collaborated extensively with a wide range of academics and Industry. Rob has given over 80 talks at international symposia, academia and industry (UK, EU, USA, Asia) & was awarded a prestigious EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship (2007-2012). Stockman has current collaborations with Howdle, Irvine and Taresco on sustainable polymers from terpenes, and will present on this collaborative work.