Invited Speakers

After a BSc at Manchester and PhD at St George’s London, I did postdoctoral research at the University of Washington in Seattle before returning to the UK as a Wellcome Career Development Fellow. I then established a research group at Leeds, where I am now Professor of Cardiovascular Science and the NIHR BRC Theme Lead for Cardiometabolic Disease Research. My research interest is cellular calcium homeostasis in the cardiovascular system and particularly the idea that mechanisms of calcium ion entry extend beyond voltage-gated calcium channels to other calcium-permeable channels that mediate responses to chemical and mechanical stimuli. My group revealed roles of TRPC, PIEZO and other ion channels in cardiovascular health and disease. Particularly notably, we discovered that the PIEZO1 channel senses fluid shear stress, thereby linking blood flow to endothelial cell functions, cardiovascular health and physical exercise capability. We identified small-molecule modulators of some of these new channels, enabling the foundations of a new company for the discovery of new cardiovascular disease therapies.

Dr. Elizabeth Jones’ expertise lies in the study of vascular remodelling. She began her career as an engineer studying embryonic blood fluid dynamics, leading to an interest in the biological process of mechanotransduction. She has published on the role of mechanotransduction in the development of arterial-venous identity. She also studies microvascular maladaptation in disease. More specifically, she investigates the microvascular involvement in diastolic heart failure as well as in cognitive impairment, investigating why pathological remodelling is activated in these diseases. The overall goal of her research is to understand how angiogenesis, pruning, and vessel enlargement are intertwined in order to adapt to the changing needs of a tissue, and how this process goes wrong in disease conditions.

Boris Martinac is an experimental biophysicist, who majored in physics and received his PhD degree in biophysics from the RWTH Aachen University in Germany. He is internationally known for his pioneering studies of microbial ion channels, including the discovery, cloning and structural and functional characterization of mechanosensitive channels in bacteria. His studies of bacterial mechanosensitive channels have been highlighted by the Nobel Prize Assembly as the ground-breaking work proving the existence of mechanosensitive channels, which ultimately led the way to the 2021 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (https://lnkd.in/gRUQjPBb. At the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute his studies focus on the role mechanosensitive ion channels play in cardiac diseases.

Emad Moeendarbary, a Full Professor of Mechanobiology at University College London, has been a pioneer in the intersection of mechanical engineering and biology. Emad research has contributed to groundbreaking discoveries, including identifying mammalian cells’ poroelastic nature and the soft mechanical signature of glial scars. His lab at UCL focuses on the mechanics of cancer metastasis and nervous system diseases, utilising advanced microfluidic platforms, computational modelling and mechanical measurement techniques such as Atomic Force Microscopy and Traction Force Microscopy. Emad has published over 60 peer-reviewed papers, secured significant internationally competitive funding and actively collaborates with global institutions. He supervises a dynamic, diverse team of multidisciplinary researchers, furthering the understanding of cellular biomechanics in health, ageing and disease.

Manuel Salmeron-Sanchez is Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Glasgow and ICREA Research Professor at Institut de Bioenginyeria de Catalunya (IBEC). Manuel develops advanced biomaterials for cell engineering and mechanobiology. His research includes materials that trigger the organisation of extracellular matrix proteins (Science Advances 2016); the use viscosity to control cell behaviour (PNAS 2018 & Nature Communications 2024) and interfaces that trigger the mechanical activation of growth factors (Advanced Materials 2024). Manuel holds an ERC Advanced Grant to develop the next generation of viscoelastic materials in cell engineering. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy for Arts and Sciences.

Giorgio Scita is Principal Investigator at IFOM ETS - The AIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology, Milan and professor of General Pathology at University of Milan. His primary research interest has been on dissecting basic mechanisms of cell migration and invasion focusing on signaling leading to spatial and temporal regulation of actin dynamics: the powerhouse for cell motility. More recently, he has been investigating the biomechanics of collective cell migration, tumor plasticity and dissemination, focusing specifically on the tissue-level solid-to-liquid-like transition underlying human breast ductal adenocarcinomas progression.