Livia Rocha Dos Santos

Role

Lívia Santos is an Associate Professor in Mechanobiology and Tissue Engineering at the School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University (NTU). Her research focuses on developing micro-physiological models of muscle, heart and bone to better understand tissue regeneration, ageing and exercise. She leads the Master in Research module, Sports Research Project.

Career overview

Lívia Santos joined NTU in 2016 as an Independent Research Fellow in Musculoskeletal Biology, following extensive post-doctoral training at leading research institutions, including Imperial College London, UK and the 3Bs & European Institute of Excellence in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, Portugal.

At Imperial College London, she worked in Professor Dame Molly Stevens' lab where she explored the impact of extracellular stiffness on bone angiogenesis supported by a prestigious Intra-European Marie Curie Fellowship (FP7). During her tenure, the Stevens group earned recognition as Research Group of the Year 2014 and Best European Research Group Led by PI Under 40s.

Lívia earned her PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering from the University of Minho, Portugal, in 2008. Her doctoral research focused on the surface properties of silicone and silicone-hydrogel contact lens materials and their interactions with bacteria.

External activity

• Invited lecture, Engineered tissues for regenerative medicine and drug discovery under the scope of the prestigious program internationalisation@home, KU Leuven, Belgium for two consecutive years
• Oral presentation, A high-throughput muscle model for sarcopenia research. Animal Free Research UK Annual Meeting, Cambridge
• Article for The Conversation, Exercise could help broken bones heal faster – here’s how (theconversation.com)
• Seminar on Exercise and biomaterials in tissue regeneration, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Sheffield
• Invited talk, Exercise and bone health, Pint of Science 2022, University of Nottingham
• Seminar, Acellular biomaterials in tissue regeneration, Orthopaedics, Trauma and Sports Medicine, Medical School, QMC, Nottingham
• Invited talk, Biological assessment of magnetically actuated biomaterials, 1st International Symposium for Women Researchers on Advanced Science and Technology, Kyushu Institute for Technology, Fukuoka, Japan

Lívia is a review editor of the journal, Frontier Biomaterials.

Sponsors and collaborators

Funding

Livia 's lab is currently funded by The Humane Research Trust,  Animal Research Free UK, Replacing Animal in Research, NTU, Innovate UK ICURe Explore and BBSRC.

Past funding were obtained from DTA3/COFUND Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Fellowship Programme, Individual Intra-European Marie Curie Fellowships, Marie Curie Actions FP7, and Individual Post-Doctoral Fellowships, Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology.