Lab Members
Open Positions at the BMSE Lab (please contact Mark for details)
PhD/MPhil project openings:
- UQ's Annual PhD Scholarship Round. For domestic and international students. Applications due 15th December (international) or 16th Februrary (domestic) for funding late-2026.
Engineering Masters and Honors project openings (10h/week; 1-2 semesters):
- Integrating equipment and sensors into stem cell bioreactors for human tissue engineering.
- Programming single-cell analyses from 3D microscopy images of lab-grown tissue .
- Bioprocess model-based optimisation of dynamic stem cell bioreactors.
We also host biomedical science final-year honors theses (full-time, 2 semesters), contact Mark for details.
Dr Mark C Allenby, Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering
Mark leads the BioMimetic Systems Engineering (BMSE) Lab and is a Senior Lecturer of Biomedical Engineering in UQ's School of Chemical Engineering. Mark is an National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow (2025-2029), an ARC DECRA Fellow (2022-2025), an Advance Queensland Fellow (2019-2022) and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at QUT. Depite being 7 years post-PhD, Mark has published over 50 papers, principally supervised 7 PhDs and 3 MPhil/RAs, co-supervised 7 PhDs and has been awarded more than $3.8m of funding as chief investigator across 25 competitive funding rounds. Mark received a PhD and MSc in chemical engineering from Imperial College London, UK and has undergraduate degrees in mathematics and chemistry from Pepperdine University, USA. Mark's background includes the engineering of dynamic stem cell bioreactors for tissue biomanufacturing, automated signal and image processing for tissue diagnostics, and model-based optimisation and control of 4D cell systems.
Email: m.allenby@uq.edu.au
Dr Dimple Sajin, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Cimple joined the BioMimetic Systems Engineering (BMSE) Lab as a part-time Research Officer in April 2026. Under the supervision of Dr. Mark Allenby, she is working on utilising a bioengineered intracranial aneurysm model for clinical applications. Prior to this, Dimple conducted her PhD research at Griffith University, where she focussed on modelling cardiovascular diseases using advanced organ-on-a-chip platforms. Her research expertise includes biomaterials fabrication, microfluidic device design and integrating mechancial and biochemicla cues to replicate disease microenvironments.
Email: d.sajin@uq.edu.au
Ms Astrid Nausa Galeano, 4th Year PhD Student
Astrid is a fourth-year PhD student at the UQ BioMimetic Systems Engineering (BMSE) Lab. Her project, under the supervision of Dr. Mark Allenby, seeks to understand how tridimensional tissue formation can be controlled by manipulating its environment, such as microscale structure and macroscale nutrient transport. To do so, she is studying the effect of 3D microscaffolds and culture designs on cell morphology, growth, maturation, and tissue organisation for RBC production with the Australian Red Cross Lifeblood. She has a Bachelor and a Master's degree in Chemical Engineering, both at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Previously she has worked in the production of therapeutic recombinant proteins employing mammalian cell culture and bioreactor optimization. Her motiviation is to develop high-impact biomedical engineering applications to facilitate patients' access to state-of-the-art technologies.
Email: g.nausagaleano@uq.edu.au
Ms Thanh Truc Nguyen, 1st Year PhD Student
Thanh-Truc holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Biomedical Engineering from the International University, Vietnam National University, in 2018. She has gained research experience in the field of bioengineering, with a focus on synthetic nanoparticles, biomaterials, physicochemical characterisation, in vivo biocompatibilitiy assays, and in vivo techniques using animal models. She completed her Master of Philosophy in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Queensland in 2024. Truc is now commencing her PhD project entitled "Engineering vessels from blood to predict transplant-associated cardiovascular disease" under the supervision of Dr Mark Allenby and Dr Rose Ann Franco.
Email: thanhtruc.nguyen@uq.edu.au
Ms Beracah Liu, 1st Year PhD Student
Beracah Lius is a first-year PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Mark Allenby and Dr. Rose Ann Franco. Beracah has a Bachelor of Biomedical Science degree from the University of Otago and an Honours degree from the University of Queensland. Her research focusses on improving the isolation and characterisation of blood outgrowth endothelial cells (BOECs) from peripheral blood to develop patient-specific 3D vascular models for studying certain diseases like transplant-associated thrombotic microangiopathy.
Email: beracah.liu@student.uq.edu.au
Mr Riley McNamara, MPhil Researcher
Title: "Quantitative Systems Pharmacology from Patient-Derived Tumour Organoids to Personalise Drug Treatment"
Email: riley.mcnamara@uq.edu.au
Mr Michael Wang, 1-year MSc Researcher
Title: "Biofabricating cell culture models of intracranial anuerysms for rupture risk prediction"
Email: michael.wang@uq.edu.au
Dr Rose Ann Franco, Industry Research Fellow
Title: "Engineering improvements for bottlenecks in cultured red blood cell (cRBC) manufacturing". Co-superivsed by Prof.s Rebecca E. Griffiths and Sara Chiaretti (Australian Red Cross Lifeblood).
Email: roseann.franco@uq.edu.au
Mr Nazifa Tabassum, Co-Supervised QIMR Berghofer PhD
Title: "Mimicking microbiome-host interactions to induce the haematopoietic stem and progenitor cell niche, promote neonatal immunity, and prevent disease susceptibility." Principally supervised by Prof. Simon Phipps (QIMRB).
Email: n.tabassum@student.uq.edu.au
Ms Diane Young, Co-Supervised UQ AIBN PhD
Title: "Bio-inspired Nanoparticles for Mechano-Regulationof Stem Cell Fate." Principally supervised by Prof.s Ruirui Qiao (UQ AIBN).
Email: diane.young@uq.edu.au
Mr Aaron (Mingyuan) Yuan, Co-Supervised QUT PhD
Title: "Deformable Vessel-On-Chip Models of Coronary Artery Disease." Principally supervised by Prof.s Zhiyong Li and Yi-Chin Toh (QUT).
Email: mingyang.yuan@hdr.qut.edu.au
Alumni
Dr Chloe de Nys (PhD, 2022-2026) - Bio-fabrication of an in vitro Model of Intracranial Aneurysms to Evaluate Cellular Response to Haemodynamic Stress. Co-supervised by Dr. Mark Allenby, Dr. Ashley Muphy and Dr. Rose Ann Franco.
- Advanced Materials Technologies (2026). https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/admt.202502610
- Scientific Data (2024). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-024-03397-8
Dr Ryan McKinnon (PhD, 2022-2026) - Engineering Porous Viscoelastic Hydrogels to Manipulate Microvascular Network Formation. Co-supervised by Dr. Mark Allenby, Dr. Ashley Muphy and Dr. Rose Ann Franco. Currently a research fellow with Johan Ulrik at the Danish Technical University (DTU).
Dr Yoel Garcia Marin (2025) Postdoctoral Researcher - Computational tissue engineering through the automated image analysis of confocal microscopy images, building single-cell analytical pipelines. Currently a research fellow with Viktor Veigh at UQ.
Ms. Samantha Cooper (2025) Honors Thesis Researcher - Engineering a perfusable hydrogel cell culture model of an intracranial aneurysm. Principally supervised by Ms. Chloe de Nys.
Mr. Hugo Martin (2025) Honors Thesis Researcher - Engineering a perfusion bone marrow mimicry bioreactor for RBC production. Principally supervised by Ms. Astrid Nausa Galeano.
Mr. Arturo González Pont (2024-2025) University of Maastricht MSc Thesis Placement - Validating fluorescent reporter MSCs. Principally supervised by Mr. Ryan McKinnon and Ms. Astrid Nausa Galeano and co-supervised by Prof. Lorenzo Moroni.
Ms. Alyssa Detterman (2024) Casual Researcher - Analytical platforms for cell culture. Currently working at Gelomics.
Ms. Alyssa Binder (2024) Honors Thesis Researcher - Engineering cardiovascular perfusion platforms for cell culture. Principally supervised by Mr. Ryan McKinnon and Ms. Chloe De Nys. Currently working at Cook Medical.
Ms. Susana Costa Maia (2023-2024) University of Maastricht MSc Thesis Placement - Designing trabeculae-like MEW PCL structures for peripheral blood mononuclear cell adherence and expansion. Principally supervised by Ms. Astrid Nausa Galeano and Dr. Rose Ann Franco and co-supervised by Prof. Lorenzo Moroni.
Mr. Harrison Krek (2023-2024) Honors Thesis Researcher - Video analysis algorithms for microvascular network formation. Co-Supervised by Dr. Ashley Murphy. Currently a medtech engineer at UQ.
Dr. Brenna Devlin (PhD 2021-2024): Development of geometric melt electrowritten polycaprolactone scaffolds to optimise cellular growth and mechanobiology. Principally supervised by Prof Maria Woodruff and Dr Naomi Paxton (QUT). Currently working at Scendea MedTech Consultancy.
Dr. Ashley Murphy (2022-2024) Postdoctoral Fellow - Advanced microfluidic hydrogel chips to controllably organise gradient microvascular, adipose, and hematopoietic tissue formation. In partial collaboration with Australian Red Cross Lifeblood (Dr Rebecca Griffiths). Won an ECR EAIT Seed Grant and a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, currently at Maastricht University.
- Biofabrication (2025). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1758-5090/ae00f6/meta
- Small (2025). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/smll.202501834
- Acta Biomaterialia (2023). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1742706123005585
Dr. Sabrina Schoenborn (PhD, 2021-2024) PhD Candidate - Fluid-structure interactions in peripheral arteries: biomechanical coupling of in-silico, in-vitro, and cellular models with application to patient-specific femoral-popliteal bypass graft anastomoses. In collaboration with Princess Alexandra Hospital (Dr Yogeesan Sivakumaran - Vascular Surgery, Dr Thomas Lloyd - Radiology). Won the 2021 Bionics Queensland Start-Up Challenge. Currently Biomechanics Lead Engineer at Q-CTRL.
- Biomechanics and Modeling in Mechanobiology (2026). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10237-025-02037-3
- Biofabrication (2025). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1758-5090/adcd9f/meta
- Computers in Biology and Medicine (2023). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010482523009393
- IEEE Reviews in Biomedical Engineering (2022). https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9924580/
Mr. William Parker (BE (Hons), 2023) Honors Thesis Researcher - Unruptured intracranial aneurysm detection. Principally supervised by Mark and Ms. Chloe De Nys (UQ). Currently in MedTech industry.
Mr. Mingyang (Aaron) Yuan (MEng, 2022-2023) Masters Research Student - Biomechanics of soft robotic bioreactors. Principally supervised by Ms. Sabrina Schoenborn (UQ). Currently a PhD candidate at QUT (Zhiyong Li, Yi-Chin Toh).
Ms. Amé Badenhorst (BE (Hons), 2022-2023) Summer Research Student - Quantitative analysis of tissue vascularisation. Principally supervised by Dr. Ashley Murphy (UQ). Currently a ChE-BME student at UQ.
Mr. Trent Brooks-Richards (PhD, 2018-2022) - Co Supervisor - 3D printed composite biomaterials for personalised vascular implants. Principally supervised by Prof Maria Woodruff and Dr Naomi Paxton (QUT). Currently in industry.
Mr. Mitchell Johnson (MPhil, 2020-2021) - Principal Supervisor - Medical image analysis of intracranial aneurysms. Currently a frontend engineer at Canva.
Mr. Cody Fell (MPhil 2019-2020) - Principal Supervisor - Soft robotic devices for emulating vascular mechanobiology. Currently a PhD Student at Rice University (Omid Veiseh).
Ms. Victoria Nguyen (MSci, 2019) - Principal Supervisor - Histological imaging techniques and flexions of femoropoliteal arteries. Currently a pathologist technician at Sullivan Nicolades.
Dr. Maureen Ross (PhD 2017-2021) - Co Supervisor - Novel imaging and bioprinting approaches for auricular cartilage reconstruction. Principally supervised by Prof Maria Woodruf (QUT). Currently Medical Engineering Lead at VitalTrace.
Dr. Michael Chen (PhD 2017-2021) - Co Supervisor - Clinical applications of 3D printing in urological surgery. Principally supervised by Prof Maria Woodruf (QUT). Currently a clinical urologist.
Dr. Rena Cruz (PhD 2017-2021) - Co Supervisor - Advanced 3D biofabrication appraoches for the treatment of microtia. Principally supervised by Prof Maria Woodruf (QUT).
Dr. Matthew Lanaro (PhD 2017-2021) - Co Supervisor - Multi-material multi-scale biofabrication approaches. Principally supervised by Prof Maria Woodruf (QUT). Currently a medical engineer at Genea Biomedx.
Dr. Naomi Paxton (PhD 2017-2020) - Co Supervisor - Additive manufacturing patient-specific porous high-density polyethylene surgical implants. Principally supervised by Prof Maria Woodruf (QUT). Currently a Senior Research Fellow at QUT.