Reece Oosterbeek BE ME PhD MIMMM AFHEA

Professor Oosterbeek is an Associate Professor of Engineering Science, and a member of the Solid Mechanics and Materials Engineering Group. His research focuses on developing new materials for medical implants, utilising approaches such as novel mechanical metamaterials and bioresorbable composites. Reece obtained BE(Hons) and ME degrees in Chemical and Materials Engineering from the University of Auckland, followed by a PhD in Materials Science and Metallurgy (2020) from the University of Cambridge.

In Cambridge Reece was a member of Trinity College and his doctoral work, funded by a Woolf Fisher Scholarship, focused on bioresorbable polymer-glass composites for medical implants. Following this Reece moved to Imperial College London for post-doctoral research, where he began working on additively manufactured metal lattice materials for orthopaedic implants in the Biomechanics Group. In 2022 he joined the department as a Departmental Lecturer, before being appointed to his current role in 2023, where he is developing new mechanical metamaterials and bioresorbable materials for advanced medical implants.

Reece's research aims to develop new materials for load-bearing medical implant devices. He aims to design new mechanical metamaterials with unprecedented mechanical properties, targeted at specific medical applications, by utilising state-of-the-art additive manufacturing techniques. By combining this with bioresorbable materials with controllable degradation behaviour, he hopes to achieve close control of the mechanical properties of medical implant materials, and their evolution over their lifetime.

Relevant techniques: Additive manufacturing (esp. LPBF), micro-CT, static mechanical and fatigue testing, surface treatment, SEM, XRD, polymer/glass/ceramic/composite processing, DSC/TGA, degradation testing

If you are interested in research in mechanical metamaterials, bioresorbable materials, and/or medical implant materials, please contact me about research opportunities and consider applying to the DPhil program in our department.