Lab Members
Open Positions at the BMSE Lab (please contact Mark for details)
Postdoc position openings:
- No funded postdoc openings at this time, please contact Mark if you are interest to co-apply for a fellowship funding opporitunity with our lab.
PhD/MPhil project openings:
- Heart Foundation Future Leader PhD Scholarship. "Engineering Vessels From Blood to Predict Transplant-Associated Cardiovascular Disease." Applications due 5th January, 2025 for funding in mid-2025 (domestic or international).
- QUIDAR (UQ-IITD) Research Academy PhD Scholarship in "High content screening of 3D cell culture environments for biopharmaceutical discovery". Applications due mid-March for funding in mid-2025 (Australian / New Zealand citizens or permanent residents only).
- UQ's Annual PhD Scholarship Round. For domestic and international students. Applications due mid/late-March 2025 for funding in late 2025 (domestic) or early 2026 (international).
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 ARC DECRA Fellow (2022-2025), an Advance Queensland Fellow (2019-2022) and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at QUT. Depite being 5 years post-PhD, Mark has published over 40 papers, principally supervised 6 PhDs and 2 MPhil/RAs, co-supervised 7 PhDs and has been awarded more than $2.8m of funding as chief investigator across 17 competitive funding rounds in 4 years. 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 Rose Ann Franco, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Rose Ann joined the BioMimetic Systems Engineering (BMSE) Lab as a Graduate Research Officer in April 2023 and became a postdoc with the conferral of her PhD in September 2023. Under the supervision of Dr. Mark Allenby, she will be working on the enrichment of endothelial colony forming cells (ECFCs) from mononuclear cell (MNC) populations isolation from peripehral and umbilical cord blood, and vascularisation of organoid models derived from MNCs. Prior to this, Rose Ann worked on guided chondrogenesis of bone marrow stromal cells in micropellet cultures using signalling molecules, pathway inhibition, and gene silencing as the focus of her PhD project at the Queensland University of Technology. Her research experience also included biomaterials fabrication and evaluation of its regenerative capabilities using in vitro and animal models at Soonchunhyang University, South Korea and microbial-derived nanocellulose production for tissue-engineering applications at University of the Philippines.
Email: roseann.franco@uq.edu.au
Ms Chloe De Nys, 3rd Year PhD Student
Chloe is a second-year PhD stduent, focussing her research on developing a bioengineered cerebrovascular model that can simulate the physiological mechanobiology of an intracranial aneurysm, to aid surgical decision making. She graduated in 2021 from a Chemical and Biological Engineering degree at University of Queensland, with a dual Biomedical Sciences degree. Chloe also has a background in pharmaceutical chemistry, previously working as a student chemist at Viatris where she became skilled in High Preformance Liquid Chromatography. She is interested in combining chemical engineering, stem cell biology, computational modelling, and artificial intelligence to advance tissue engineering research and development.
Email: c.denys@uq.net.au
Mr Ryan McKinnon, 3rd Year PhD Student
In 2022, Mr Ryan McKinnon began a PhD under the supervision of Dr. Mark Allenby with the goal of manufacturing lab-grown patient-specific grafts with inbuilt vascular conduits optimally designed for defect-specific regeneration. Mr McKinnon has a Bachelor of Biomedical Science and a Master’s in Medical Research (MMR). Previously under the mentorship of Associate Professor Andrew Bulmer (Griffith University, AUS), his research was centred around developing a pre-clinical biocompatibility assessment of medical devices, in humans. Since graduating from an MMR Ryan has worked in industry, most notably, a stage IIb/IIIa clinical trial and in an industry sponsored group at Griffith University. The methods utilised in his previous projects included flow cytometry, scanning electron microscopy, biochemical analysis, and functional medical device assessments (e.g., flow set-ups), sonography, microscopy and thromboelastometry.
Email: r.mckinnon@uq.net.au
Ms Astrid Nausa Galeano, 2nd Year PhD Student
Astrid is a second-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. 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
Mr Arturo Gonzalez Pont, Visiting MPhil Student
Email: a.gonzalezpont@uq.edu.au
Ms Alyssa Binder, Honors Thesis Researcher
Alyssa is currently completing a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, and performing her final year research thesis on engineering pumping systems that can recapitulate aspects of cardiovascular flow within micro- and large-scale cell culture models. Alyssa is supervised by Mark Allenby, Chloe de Nys, and Ryan McKinnon.
Email: a.binder@student.uq.edu.au
Ms Alyssa Detterman, MBiotech Researcher
Alyssa is pursuing a Masters of Biotechnology at UQ while assisting the BioMimetic Systems Engineering Lab. She Graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelors of Science in Environmental Science in Biology, where she assisted the Chemical Engineering Institute for Cellular and Metabolic Biology within the Alper Lab to research the enxymatic degredation of polyethylene terephthalate.
Email: a.detterman@uqconnect.edu.au
Alumni
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.
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).
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.
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 Convergence Medical.
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.