2025 Materials for Medical Devices workshop

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.

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.