Biomedical Engineering and Healthcare
Principal Investigators
Zhanfeng Cui
FREng, Donald Pollock Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of Oxford
Director of Strategic Projects, China Mathematics, Physical and Life Sciences Division
Director, JITRI IMPACT Institute at Oxford University
Cathy Ye
Associate Professor in Engineering Science, University of Oxford
Professor Cui and Professor Ye specialise in enabling technologies for tissue engineering and stem cell technology, such as the development of bioreactor technologies to enable bone, cartilage, tendon and skin culture to grow. A further area of interest is the study of the technology and science in cryopreservation and vitrification to preserve living cells and engineered tissues.
James Kwan
Associate Professor of Engineering Science, University of Oxford
Professor Kwan’s research interests focus on physical acoustics, namely ultrasound and cavitation. Prof Kwan’s research aims to engineer systems to harness the high energy of ultrasound and cavitation and promote drug delivery, gene transfer to cells, and sonochemistry.
David Clifton
Professor of Clinical Machine Learning, University of Oxford
Professor Clifton focuses on the development of AI for healthcare applications. Clifton’s lab at OSCAR will develop novel “smart” healthcare technologies, involving Chinese hospital partners and Chinese technology firms.
Co-PI
Dr. Haiyun Pei/Prof. Zhanfeng Cui’s group
Dr. Pei joined OSCAR in 2021. She was a post-doctoral associate in the Stem Cell Institute and in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota. Her previous research focused on differentiation of embryonic stem cells toward the hepatic lineage, generation of induced pluripotent stem cells through reprogramming technology, as well as proliferation and differentiation of hematopoietic stem cells.
Senior Research Scientist
Dr. Petr Jurcicek / Prof. Cui & Prof. Cathy Ye’s group
Dr Petr Jurcicek joined OSCAR in January 2023 as a Senior Research Scientist in Prof. Cui’s and Prof. Cathy Ye’s group. He earned his PhD in 2014 at the Dalian University of Technology, School of Mechanical Engineering with a focus on microsystems technology (MEMS). During his research, he focused on computational fluid dynamics modelling of nano-electrospray ion transfer in AC electric fields from the atmospheric pressure region to the high vacuum of a mass spectrometer and developed a novel miniaturised device to improve ion transfer efficiency.
Since earning his PhD degree, Petr has pursued his professional career path in the biomedical and consumer products industry. Before he joined OSCAR, Petr worked at Sky UK Ltd, Europe’s largest media company and TV broadcaster based in the United Kingdom. There, he was heavily involved in Glass TV development and mass production, Sky’s first and largely successful TV product in the UK market. Petr is a seasoned mechanical design and R&D engineer with broad experience and knowledge of full product lifecycle, mass manufacturing, electronics design and software development.
Dr. Ivan Smirnov / Prof. James Kwan’s group
Dr Ivan Smirnov joined OSCAR in July 2023 as a Senior Research Scientist in Prof. James Kwan’s group. He received his PhD in Physics and Mathematics in 2013 at Saint Petersburg University with a specialization in Solid Mechanics and Fracture Mechanics. His former research related to non-equilibrium processes of deformation, failure, and energy dissipation in various media. In his practice, he actively uses ultrasound and optoacoustic techniques to study the physical and mechanical properties of matter. In the last six years, he has been closely involved in the effect of ultrasound on the intensification of industrial processes as well as phase transitions. Also, he has been intensely interested in the research of acoustic cavitation and associated dynamic phenomena. His current research is focused on controlling the effects of ultrasound and cavitation to promote phase transitions, chemical reactions, and targeted drug delivery.
Research Scientist
Dr. Zhangdaihong Liu / Prof David Clifton’s group
Zhangdaihong (Jessie) Liu undertook her PhD at the Mathematics for Real-World Systems CDT at University of Warwick. During this time, she was also a visiting PhD student at the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford, and a PhD enrichment student at the Alan Turing Institute. Prior to this, she obtained an MSc in Mathematics of Systems from Warwick University, an MSc in Mathematical Finance at Loughborough University, and a BSc in Mathematics at Shandong University, China.
Her PhD thesis entitled ‘Latent Variable Modelling of Population Neuroimaging and Behavioural Data’ focused on the development of a dimension reduction method that improves the interpretability of latent variable models applied to health-related datasets. Her research also involved uncovering latent patterns between neuroimaging, behavioural and demographic measures, as well as the application of various large dataset processing techniques.
Jessie’s research interests also include predictive modelling, feature extractions, recommender systems, deep learning and reproducible research.
Dr. Yujiang Wang / Prof. David Clifton’s group
Dr. Yujiang Wang joined OSCAR in October 2023 as a Research Scientist and Associate Head of Machine Learning Lab in Prof. David Clifton's Digital Health group. Yujiang received his PhD degree in Computer Vision from Imperial College London in 2021, and he also possesses a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from Tsinghua University and two MSc degrees with Distinctions from Imperial College London and University College London, respectively.
Yujiang took a research career onsite at Meta AI for more than half a year after his PhD, and later he joined the University of Oxford as a Postdoctoral Researcher in clinical AI under the supervision of Prof. David Clifton for around two years. Yujiang's research interests centre around AI for healthcare, lip-reading, intelligent wearable devices, etc., and he is still ready to embrace new questions and challenges as an AI researcher.
Dr. Huilin Li/ Prof. Zhanfeng Cui's group
Dr. Huilin Li joined OSCAR in September, 2021 as a Research Scientist in Regenerative Medical Engineering. She earned her PhD in 2021 at the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Lab, Institute of Health Service and Transfusion Medicine, AMMS. Her former research focused on the direct hematopoietic reprogramming, hematopoietic stem cell expansion ex vivo, integration-free reprogramming of induced pluripotent stem cells and preferential hematopoietic differentiation in induced pluripotent stem cells. During her study, she published three SCI papers as the co-first author with IFs of 3.929, 4.556 and 6.832 respectively. She also had a fourth SCI paper published as the second author with an IF of 4.963.
Research Assistant
Zhu Jiachen / Prof Cathy Ye’s group
Jiachen Zhu received the master's degree from Soochow University in July 2019 and joined OSCAR. Her research focuses on the development of silk protein micropattern biomaterials. The main work now is about the differences in gene expression of stem cells on the different surfaces of biomaterials.
Zeng Yida/ Prof Zhanfeng Cui’s group
Zeng yida received his bachelor degree in Biochemistry from Imperial College London in 2009. Have worked with GMP grade cell therapy for five years. Currently interested in the characterisation of mesenchymal stem cells.
Jiawei Ju
Project Manager
Jiawei Ju joined OSCAR in May 2023 as a project manager in in energy storage. She graduated from Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2014. She was engaged in product development and translating research outputs into practical applications in the environmental protection industry. At OSCAR, she is mainly responsible for the industrialization of energy storage related technologies.
Mohan Zhang/ Prof. James Kwan’s group
Mohan Zhang joined OSCAR in August 2023 as the Research Technician in prof. James Kwan’s group. She achieved her master’s degree in biomedical engineering from Tianjin Medical University in 2022. Her previous research focused on the numerical simulation of transcranial ultrasound stimulation of the hippocampus. Her current research will focused on promote drug delivery used by ultrasound cavitation.
