I am originally from the UK and I am now an Associate Professor at Taipei Medical University (TMU). My training is entirely as a biologist, and now I work in biomedical engineering and tissue engineering; therefore I collaborate with biomaterial specialists. We also strive to work with clinical doctors and surgeons, since they know more about the realities of treating diseases.
My lab is interested in projects related to ischaemic diseases, such as myocardial infarction (heart attack) and kidney injury. My lab is quite small, but we have a diverse mix of students from Taiwan, Germany, Vietnam, Mexico, Latvia and others. We strongly emphasise teamwork and collaboration, and all my lab members support each other. I am also highly active and make myself available to students as much as possible. Together, it creates a friendly atmosphere, but also highly-motivated and hard-working students. My lab is not “easy”, and the workload will be very high. But in return you will learn a lot of new knowledge and skills.
We are researching new therapies using biomaterials, cells, and cell components (growth factors, cytokines, extracellular vesicles) as treatments. In particular, we are interested in combining these approaches; i.e. biomaterials to improve cell retention and activity, or methods to improve the cargo and function of extracellular vesicles.
Some recent achievements, in no particular order, are: being awarded the NSTC Young Scholar Fellowship Program; publishing our first EV paper in Journal Extracellular Biology, presenting at BMES2022 and BMES2023, having an abstract accepted to the American Heart Association 2023 conference. I have also recently been awarded the “Best Mentor” award in TMU this Summer.
My BSc and PhD were both at Durham University, UK. I did not do a MSc (not required in the UK). My postdoctoral fellowship was at Academia Sinica, which is a research institute in Taiwan, where I spent four years.