Prof Laoise McNamara

Prof. Laoise McNamara is an Established Professor of Engineering (Biomedical) and Head of School of Engineering in the College of Science and Engineering at University of Galway. She leads the Mechanobiology and Medical Device Research group, who use advanced experimental and computational approaches to study the role of mechanobiology in osteoporosis and cancer-bone metastasis. She also collaborates with Stryker, Boston Scientific and Medtronic applying her expertise in computational and experimental biomechanics to the pre-clinical assessment of surgical and minimally invasive medical devices. Professor McNamara has been awarded two ERC Awards (Consolidator and Starter), an Irish Research Council Laureate Award, a Science Foundation Ireland Investigators Grant and various other funding. She was awarded the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland Silver Medal in Bioengineering in 2024, and the Irish Research Council “Researcher of the Year” award in 2019, a NIRA award by the Orthopaedic Research Society, and the Harold B. Frost Young Investigator Award by the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. She has published more than 100 research articles and is a reviewer for international institutes and centres, peer-reviewed journals and international funding panels.