Mechanobiology

Dr. Patrick McGarry is a lecturer in Biomedical Engineering and the Program Director for the Undergraduate Degree in Biomedical Engineering at NUI Galway. Dr. McGarry’s research group has developed an internationally leading reputation in the field of Biomechanics, and in particular computational cell mechanics. Dr McGarry has to date supervised 11 PhD students to completion. He was the primary supervisor of six simultaneous successful PhD completions in October 2012. This achievement is an official record for NUIG. All six students completed in exactly four years (October 2008-October 2012), graduating in March 2013. His PhD students have been awarded numerous international honours and awards (ASME, Engineers Ireland, World Congress of Biomechanics). Dr. McGarry is PI on three major Science Foundation Ireland research grants for Cell Contractility Modelling. His research group has published over 53 papers in leading journals in the field, and presented over 70 research papers at leading international conferences in the field. Dr. McGarry has developed strong collaborations with leading international research groups, including: University of Cambridge; University of California, Santa Barbara; Georgia Institute of Technology; and Rice University.

Professor Laoise McNamara is a Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the National University of Ireland Galway and the Program Director for the Masters in Biomedical Engineering (MSc). She holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Trinity College Dublin and a 1st class Honours degree in Mechanical Engineering from NUI Galway. She completed Postdoctoral training at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, USA. From 2007-2009 she was a Lecturer in Mechanobiology and Musculoskeletal Biomechanics at the University of Southampton, United Kingdom. She was appointed to NUI Galway in 2009 as a Science Foundation Stokes Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering. She established the Mechanobiology and Medical Device Research group (MMDRG, www.mechanobiology.ie) at NUI Galway. Her research has been widely published and cited, and has attracted significant research funding (€3,620,285), most notably the ERC Starting Independent Researcher Award (€1,499,910) in 2011 and a Science Foundation Ireland Investigators Grant (€883,257). She has interdisciplinary research collaborations with researchers at Georgia Tech, Notre Dame University, City College of New York, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Tampere University of Technology, INSERM Nantes and the University of Southampton. She collaborates with Stryker, Boston Scientific and Medtronic.