Dr Marco Pensalfini
BSc (Bologna); MSc (Bologna); PhD (Dr. Sc. ETH)

 

Research Group Members

Fibrous Biomaterials Laboratory @ QMUL

Established in 2024, the FBL combines experiments and simulations to investigate the multiscale biomechanics and mechanobiology of highly deformable materials that derive their properties from fibre networks, such as connective tissues, epithelia, and their surrogates.

 

Current Group Members

Marco Pensalfini - Group leader 

Marco has been a faculty member of QMUL since 2024. He completed his PhD at ETH Zurich, after which he worked for the MedTech company Zimmer Biomet and at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. He has also been a visitor at Purdue University and UW-Madison. His work received the 2020 SKINTEGRITY.CH Young Investigator Award and an ERC in Italy 2025 Best Frontier Research Project Award.
   

Sara Piccirillo - PhD researcher

Sara graduated from QMUL with a BEng in Biomedical Engineering in 2024 and is currently pursuing a PhD in Medical Engineering, co-supervised by Dr. Inês Sequeira (QMUL Dentistry). Her research aims to identify biomechanical factors determining alternative scarring phenotypes in skin vs. oral mucosa.

 

Ongoing Student Projects

  • The Ageing Crew (team of 6 MEng students): Data-driven computational modelling of ageing facial skin biophysics.
  • Elif Agillar: Multiscale computational modelling of organo-hydrogels for tissue engineering applications.
  • Cheng-Hao (Howard) Chang: AI-assisted design and fabrication of wearable patches with skin-like deformability.
  • Omar Hamad: Multiaxial mechanical characterisation of nanocomposite elastomers for cardiovascular applications.

 

Group Alumni

  • Prapti Shrestha (BME MEng '26) characterised and modelled the multiaxial deformation behaviour of scar sheets. Her work in our group received the Best Undergraduate Research Poster Award at SEMS Industrial Liaison Forum (March '25).
  • Oreoluwa Adeoye (BME MSc '25) characterised the cyclic uniaxial deformation behaviour of nanocomposite elastomers for cardiovascular applications.
  • Nirshanth Aravindhan (BME MSc '25) developed computational models to understand the mechanical interplay between scar sheets and the underlying tissues.

 

Current PhD Projects

Thesis Title
Biomechanics of scarless wound healing
CoaCT CDT training programme
Engineered Recombinant Strategies to Organo-Hydrogel Design with Applications from Plant-Based Foods to Tissue Engineering