Rate My Professor Manuel Salmeron-Sanchez

Professor Manuel Salmeron-Sanchez serves as Chair of Biomedical Engineering and Head of the James Watt School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow since August 2022, having joined the institution in 2013 as Chair of Biomedical Engineering. He previously headed the Division of Biomedical Engineering from 2014 to 2022. Salmeron-Sanchez obtained his MEng in Engineering in 1997 and PhD in Materials Science specializing in Biomaterials in 2002, both from the Technical University of Valencia. His prior appointments include Full Professor at the Technical University of Valencia from 2010 to 2013, Head of Materials and Nanotechnology at Abengoa Research from 2011 to 2012, Visiting Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2010 and at Kyushu University in 2020, Associate Professor and Assistant Professor at Valencia, and postdoctoral fellowships at KU Leuven in Belgium and the Institute for Macromolecular Chemistry in Prague.

His research specializes in material-based strategies for tissue repair and regeneration, engineering in vitro 3D models to understand physiology, disease progression, and as platforms for drug testing. Core interests encompass the design of advanced biomaterials and biointerfaces, interactions between growth factors and the extracellular matrix, and stem cell engineering, with translational efforts targeting bone regeneration in critical defects and synthetic biology approaches to control stem cells. He co-founded the Centre for the Cellular Microenvironment at the University of Glasgow. As Principal Investigator, he leads projects funded by an ERC Advanced Grant in 2022 for next-generation viscoelastic materials in regenerative medicine, an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2012, two ERC Proof of Concept grants in 2015 and 2017, an EPSRC Programme Grant, and initiatives from the Find a Better Way charity. Salmeron-Sanchez is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 2019, Editor-in-Chief of Biomaterials Advances since 2019, and serves on the editorial boards of Materials Today Bio, Biomedical Engineering Advances, Advanced Healthcare Materials, and Advanced NanoBiomed Research. He has authored over 140 publications in leading journals, including 'Engineered surfaces that promote capture of latent proteins' (Advanced Materials, 2024), 'Bioengineered niches that recreate physiological extracellular matrix organisation' (Nature Communications, 2024), 'Molecular clutch drives cell response to surface viscosity' (PNAS, 2018), 'Material-driven fibronectin assembly for high-efficiency presentation' (Science Advances, 2016), and 'A tough act to follow: collagen hydrogel modifications' (Biomaterials, 2021).