Leeds academic awarded prestigious fellowship to tackle major health challenges
University of Leeds researcher, Anthony Herbert has been awarded a prestigious Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship to develop innovative solutions with the potential to transform healthcare worldwide.
The fellowships, awarded by the Royal Academy of Engineering and supported by the Leverhulme Trust, gives leading mid-career engineers the chance to dedicate a year solely to research by funding a replacement for their teaching and administrative duties.
In the latest round of fellowships, only eight awards were made across the UK. Leeds claimed two of them, courtesy of Dr James Chandler, from the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, and Dr Anthony Herbert from the School of Mechanical Engineering. Between them, the pair look to pioneer cutting-edge treatments that could pave the way for wholesale changes to the way we treat common health problems.
Multi-STEP (Dr Anthony Herbert)
Dr Herbert is developing a new laboratory platform called Multi-STEP – “Multi-scale STructural Evaluation Platform for in-vitro musculoskeletal disease models” – to improve how scientists study musculoskeletal diseases, which affect around one in three people in the UK.
Current tools for testing new treatments are limited, and often don’t reflect how these diseases behave in real human tissue. Multi-STEP will use an innovative approach based on decellularised biological scaffolds – healthy tissue that has had all its cells and DNA removed, leaving behind the natural structure that gives tissue its shape and strength. This structure can then be “repopulated” with human cells to mimic diseases such as tendinopathy, allowing researchers to study them in a realistic and controlled way.
Dr Herbert said: “I’m thrilled to have received this prestigious award and the opportunity it provides in launching my research in a new and exciting direction. Leeds has a strong history of success in gaining these Fellowships, and it is a privilege to join the ranks of the previous successful academics.”
Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowships are known for supporting bold, forward-thinking ideas. This year’s UK-wide awardees are working on diverse challenges, eco-friendly nanocomposite food packaging, quantum microscopes for energy-efficient electronics, and AI for safer autonomous vehicles.
Professor Mark Sandler FREng, Chair of the Fellowships panel, said: “We are truly inspired by the work of this year’s awardees and proud to support exceptional individuals whose pioneering research will play a vital role in shaping a smarter, safer, and more sustainable world.”
Further information