Meet the Team

  • Joseph van Batenburg-Sherwood is a Lecturer in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London and the principal investigator of the vBS Lab. He has an MEng in Mechanical Engineering from King’s College London and a PhD in Biofluid Dynamics from University College London.

    He also teaches the courses ‘Biomechanics’ (focussing on Biofluids) and ‘Probability & Statistics’ in the Department of Bioengineering.

    Google Scholar

    LinkedIn

    Imperial College Website

PhD Students

  • Gladys is a PhD student (2023-2027) working on microfluidic models to better replicate the microvasculature and analyse the effect of RBC aggregation and deformability in the blood flow. She graduated from Tecnologico de Monterrey with an BSc (Hons) Biomedical Engineering (2016-2021) and a specialization in Biomedical Microtechnology, and with an MSc Biomedical Engineering (2022-2023) from Imperial College London as part of the British Council Women in STEM programme.

    LinkedIn

  • Ioana is a PhD student (2023-2027) studying the relationship between RBC pathologies and endothelial cell mechanotransduction using vascularized microfluidic chips. She is co-supervised by Dr Claire Higgins and sponsored by the EPSRC. Ioana graduated from Imperial College with an MEng in Biomedical Engineering (2019-2023), where she received the Governor’s MEng Prize in Bioengineering.

    LinkedIn

  • Raphael is a PhD student (2025–2029) studying how altered red blood cell properties in diabetes mellitus influence the progression of diabetic retinopathy and vision loss, using ex vivo perfused retinal models. He graduated from Imperial College London with an MEng in Biomedical Engineering (2020–2025). 

  • Maryam is a PhD student looking at developing microfluidic methods to measure RBC mechanical properties and seeing the impact of changing those properties on microvascular flow. She graduated with an MEng in Engineering Science (2018-2022) from the University of Oxford and with an MSc in Biomedical Engineering from Imperial College London (2022-2023) where her MSc project was also in the vBS Lab.

    LinkedIn

Project Students

Melissa Hunter

MEng student

Alumni

Nidhi Sinha (2022 - 2024)
Next stop: Researcher at Unravel Health

Postdocs

Simon Tupin (2020 - 2023)
Next stop: Senior Laboratory Research Scientist at The Francis Crick Institute

PhD Students

Daniel Harwood (2021-2025)

Adele Lam (2018 - 2024)
Title: Development of an in vitro microscale blood perfusion platform to study the role of blood flow on endothelial cells
Next stop: Associate Consultant at Bain & Company

Laura Mereweather (2019 - 2024)
Co-supervised with Prof Jim Crawley
Title: Investigating the role of shear stress, von Willebrand Factor, platelets and neutrophils in the initiation of venous thrombosis

Foivos Chatzidimitriou (2017 - 2021)
Co-supervised with Prof Darryl Overby
Title: A platform to restore intra-tissue flow in live explant assays
Next stop: Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital

Josefin Jansson-Edqvist (2017 - 2021)
Co-supervised with Prof Anna Randi
Title: Developing a 3D blood vessel-on-a-chip microfluidic in vitro model to study thrombosis in a controlled microenvironment
Next stop: R&D Leadership Development Program at J&J

Michael Madekurozwa (2014 - 2019)
Co-supervised with Prof Darryl Overby
Title: Aqueous humour outflow dynamics in mice
Next stop: Medical Device R&D Engineer at Occuity Ltd

2024-2025
Amba Sharma (MEng), Chang-Syu Chen (MRes), Nur Fatihah Mohd Zool Amali (MEng), Raf S.J. Phoenix (MEng), Sofia Grasselli (Visiting MSc)

2023-2024
Andrea Mula (MRes), Lucy Dain-Williams (MEng), Eleonora Riva (Visiting MSc), Yuxi Guo (MSc), Huaiyu Shen (MSc)

Project Students