Many congratulations to Dr Gianluca Marcelli of the School of Engineering, who has been promoted to Senior Lecturer this academic year.
Dr Marcelli has made significant contributions to the School of Engineering and Bioengineering research, and has developed important industry links.
He has been programme chair of the BEng Biomedical Engineering course, which he proposed, planned, promoted and launched, including its first IET accreditation process, which successfully obtained 5-year accreditation.
In his role as UG admissions officer for several years, Dr Marcelli has played a crucial role in increasing the UG recruitment in the School by proposing and implementing a number of new admission initiatives, which have significantly increased the applications and their conversion rate. He has also recently been appointed as the Director of Studies for all the engineering courses (UG and PGT) at Kent.
His main research contribution lies in the field of physical properties of biological cells in health and disease. He was one of the first to use Molecular Dynamics Simulation to develop a computational model of the human red-blood cell membrane, which is now in widespread use by the research community.
His research has resulted in the production of high-quality papers in high impact factor journals, which combine theory, computational and experimental results. He has also obtained multiple research grants, including two EPSRC grants as PI, and European Regional Development Fund as Co-I.
In addition to his academic success, Dr Marcelli has generated impact beyond the Bioengineering research field by establishing contacts with the industry. He has collaborated with Haag-Streit UK (HSUK), a manufacturer and distributor of medical devices, to develop a digital version of an instrument which measures internal eye pressure. He has also collaborated with RoseMedical, a company that develops software and instrumentation for speech-swallowing therapy, to interface a RoseMedical software module, icSpeech, with a swallowing biofeedback system developed at Kent.
Professor Richard Guest, Head of the School of Engineering commented on the recent promotions in the School: ‘The recent promotions within the School of Engineering recognise the significant contributions that Mike, Sanaul and Luca continue to make across all areas of their activities. All three promotions are well deserved’.