Professor Ruth Wilcox, University of Leeds, UK

Ruth is Director of the Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the School of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Leeds. She co-directs the university-wide Centre for HealthTech Innovation which brings together academic and clinical researchers from across multiple disciplines to develop technology solutions to clinical challenges.

Her research interests include development and evaluation of medical devices and interventions for the musculoskeletal system, including the hip, knee, spine and ankle. Her particular focus is on the development of experimental and computational methods for the preclinical evaluation of orthopaedic implants and surgical procedures. Experimentally, she has led projects to develop novel in vitro whole-joint testing approaches for evaluating tissue-sparing treatments such as nucleus augmentation and vertebroplasty in the spine, and osteochondral repair in the knee. She has also developed image-based finite element methods for parallel computational analysis. These methods allow direct validation of the computational models with their experimental counterparts, and enable different implant, surgical and patient variables to be examined systematically.

Ruth has held a Royal Academy of Engineering Post-doctoral Fellowship and major grants from the EPSRC and European Research Council. She currently leads an EPSRC Place Based Impact Acceleration Account which help support the translation of medical technology research to industry and clinic. Ruth is a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering Panel for Biomedical Engineering, whose remit includes the provision of advice to government, health authorities and the medical research community. She received an MRC Suffrage Science award for leading women in Science Engineering and Technology in 2015.

Professor Diego Mantovani, Universite Laval, Quebec, Canada

Diego is holder of the Canada Research Chair in Biomaterials and Bioengineering for the Innovation in Surgery (2012-2026), Full Professor (2010-present) at the Department of Materials Engineering at Laval University and senior scientist (2012-present) at the Division of Regenerative Medicine of the Research Center of the CHU de Québec. Diego Mantovani is a recognised specialist in biomaterials.  At the frontier between engineering, medicine and biology, within his team, his works aim to improve the clinical performances of medical devices for effective functional replacement, and to envisage the next generations of biomaterials to develop strategies based on regenerative medicine susceptible to enhance the quality of the life of patients. He has authored more than 350 original articles, holds 5 patents, and presented more than 210 keynotes, invited and seminar lectures worldwide in the field of advanced materials for biomedical applications. His works received more than 15,000 citations, H-Factor 61 (GoogleScholar, 53 Scopus). In 2019 he was nominated Fellow of the American Society for Materials Intl for seminal contributions to innovative biodegradable metallic materials and coatings to replace and regenerate tissue and organs that lost their functionality. He was Executive Co-Chair of the 10^th World Biomaterials Congress 2016. Since 2009, with his colleague Dr Frank Witte (Charité Belin, Germany) he Co-Chair annually THE event in the field of bioresorbable metals for temporary implants (www.biodegrdablemetals.org). He is member of the advisory committee of three Global Medical Devices for Health Consortia in Asia, America, and Europe.

Haughton Lecture

Professor Laoise McNamara, University of Galway, Ireland

Professor Laoise McNamara holds the position of Established Professor of Engineering and serves as the Head of the School of Engineering at the University of Galway. She earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Trinity College Dublin, where she initially participated in Bioengineering in Ireland to present her research. Following this, she completed her Postdoctoral training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Her academic journey includes roles as a Lecturer at NUI Galway and the University of Southampton (UK). In 2009, she was appointed as a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) Stokes Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering at NUI Galway.

Professor McNamara is the founder of the Mechanobiology and Medical Device Research group at the University of Galway. The group employs multidisciplinary approaches to investigate mechanobiology and its impact on bone development, osteoporosis, and cancer metastasis. They develop advanced experimental and computational models to explore the intricate biomechanical and multicellular environment that governs mechanobiological processes in bone. These models are applied to scrutinize the mechanisms underlying changes in bone cells during conditions such as osteoporosis and metastatic bone disease.

In her collaborative efforts, Prof. McNamara works with industry leaders such as Stryker, Boston Scientific, and Medtronic, applying her expertise in computational and experimental biomechanics to the pre-clinical assessment of surgical and minimally invasive medical devices. In addition to her research leadership, she has undertaken various administrative roles at the University of Galway, including Vice Dean for Research and Innovation, and currently as the Head of the School of Engineering. Over the past 15 years, she has led her research group, comprising 60 researchers.

Her research has earned her two ERC Awards (Consolidator and Starter), an Irish Research Council Laureate Award, a Science Foundation Ireland Investigators Grant, and various other funding. Professor McNamara’s publication record includes over 90 research articles, and she actively serves as an advisory board member, chair, and reviewer for international journals, funding panels, and institutes. Her research group has been awarded numerous prizes and awards, many of which were from the Bioengineering in Ireland conference. She has been honored personally with the Irish Research Council “Researcher of the Year” award in 2019, a NIRA award by the Orthopaedic Research Society, and the Harold B. Frost Young Investigator Award by the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. Notably, she was selected as a “2019 Spotlight Speaker” at the Orthopaedic Research Society meeting.

Having participated in Bioengineering in Ireland for over two decades, Professor McNamara emphasizes the significance of this conference and its community in her own success and that of many others. She acknowledges the conference’s role in expanding networks, fostering collaborations, inspiring and nurturing creativity. The unwavering support from the Bioengineering in Ireland community stands as a cornerstone of their collective success, leaving behind a thriving legacy. She is honoured that her first Bioengineering in Ireland award is the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland Silver Medal and will deliver the Samuel Haughton Honorary Lecture at the 29^th annual Bioengineering in Ireland conference.