CerebroMachines Lab

Dr. Mihai Lomora

Dr Mihai Lomora is an Assistant Professor of Biomaterial Chemistry in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences and Research Ireland CÚRAM Funded Investigator at the University of Galway. Mihai is leading the CerebroMachines Lab, which is centred on developing biomimetic systems (self-assembled protein-lipid/polymer hybrid systems, phytoplankton biosynthetic scaffolds) and vascularized brain organoids. His research aims to tailor these biomimetic systems to work for the controlled delivery of therapeutics in brain / organ-on-chip disease diagnostic and treatment testing platforms. Previously, he was a Lecturer in Physical Chemistry at the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, University of Galway, Ireland. Through CÚRAM, University of Galway, Ireland, Mihai gained extensive experience in managing the EPSRC-SFI Joint Centre for Doctoral Training in Engineered Tissues for Discovery, Industry, and Medicine (lifETIME CDT): https://lifetime-cdt.org/. He received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Basel, Switzerland (2017) and was the recipient of a Swiss National Science Foundation Early.Postdoc Mobility.

Group Leader

Dr. Siobhan Crilly

Postdoctoral Researchers

Siobhan joined the lab as a Medtrain+ Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow through CÚRAM. Her interests lie in developing non-animal systems for neuroscience. Her current project involves utilising the state-of-the-art technique of vascularising brain organoids to establish a model of haemorrhagic stroke. Siobhan received her PhD from the University of Manchester in 2019 and since, has been awarded a Stroke Association postdoc and a NC3Rs funded Fellowship to characterise a model of haemorrhagic stroke in zebrafish larvae and develop bioengineered material techniques for in vitro stroke modelling.

Josep graduated in Biochemistry from the Rovira i Virgili University (Spain). He has a Master’s in Advanced Biotechnology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). During his studies, Josep worked at the Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (Spain), Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy (Poland), and the start-up ZIP Solutions SL (Spain). After that, he worked for 2 years as a research assistant at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). His research project focuses on the vascularization of healthy models of brain organoids. 

Josep Fumadó Navarro

Doctoral Researchers

Elif Göksu Kizilyar

Göksu joined the lab in September 2024 as a PhD student funded by the University of Galway College of Science and Engineering Postgraduate Research Scholarship. Her project focuses on exploiting coccolith scaffolds for engineered micro-devices. She holds both BSc and MSc degrees in Bioengineering from Yıldız Technical University (YTU), Türkiye, graduating with High Honours. Göksu brings over three years of hands-on experience in algal biotechnology and bioprocessing, gained through her academic research at YTU. She further broadened her expertise through a pharmaceutical industry internship at PharmaVision and as an Erasmus fellow at KU Leuven (Belgium). Her previous research spans diverse applications, including bioactive content analysis, cosmetics, metaproteomics, wastewater treatment, and Antarctic-adapted microalgae.

Nicola Campbell

MSc Students

Nicola is a Neuropharmacology MSc student at the University of Galway. Her MSc project focuses on vessel damage mechanisms in cerebral organoids. Nicola completed her Bachelor’s in Neuroscience at Cardiff University in 2024. During her degree she joined an internship at Radboud University at the Donder’s Institute Translational Neuroscience Unit and at the Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine at Queen’s University Belfast.

Jiggle Jinsho

Jiggle is pursuing a MSc in Biotechnology on a project focused on coccolithophore scaffolds for biotechnological applications. She graduated with a BSc in Botany from St Teresa's College, affiliated to Mahatma Gandhi (MG) University (Kottayam, Kerala, India), before her experience as a microbiologist at Biogenic Labs (Kerala, India), where she performed microbial testing and analysis.

Previous Students

Cheyenne Avery - BSc, Final Year Project (2022)

Emily McDonald - BSc, Final Year Project (2021)

Elliot Hardiman - BSc, Final Year Project (2022)

John Boyne - BSc, Final Year Project (2022)

Anna Burke - BSc, Final Year Project (2022)

Aisling Zweizig - BSc, Final Year Project (2022)

Daniel Delaney - BSc, Final Year Project (2023)

Ashley-Mai Luskin - BSc, Final Year Project (2024)

Theo Knobloch - Erasmus (2017)

Dorian Sbaglia - Erasmus, France (2018)

Axel Linden - Erasmus, France (2020)

Siham Otmani - Erasmus, France (2021)

Etienne Richard - Erasmus, France (2022)

Thiago Fernandes - Erasmus, France (2022)

Ashka Patel - Peak Co-op Award, US (2023)

David Shumate - Voluntary student, US (2018)

Vinay Kumar - MSc Biomedical Science (2021)

Galina Rupina - MSc Biomedical Science (2021)

Elisa Segantin - MSc Neuropharmacology (2021)

MSc Students

Final Year Undergraduates

Erasmus & Other Training Programmes