Prof. David Hoey

Dr. David Hoey is a Professor in the School of Engineering and Fellow of Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland. He is also Principal Investigator (PI) in the Trinity Centre for Biomedical Engineering and holds an Adjunct Professorship at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Prof. Hoey is an internationally recognised researcher in the field of musculoskeletal mechanobiology, therapeutics, and materials for regeneration. Over the past 13 years, he has led a multidisciplinary research group funded by the European Research Council (Starter grant 2012, Proof of Concept 2018) that has pioneered research on the mechanisms of mechanotransduction and cell-cell communication involved in bone physiology. This fundamental research underpins a more translational program aimed at developing novel therapeutics and materials to treat bone defects and orthopaedic pathologies such as osteoporosis. In particular, through additional prestigious national funding by Research Ireland (Frontiers For the Future Project Grant 2020 and Award Grant 2024) he has made significant scientific contributions deciphering the role of extracellular vesicles (EVs) in bone physiology, identifying the osteocyte derived-EV and associated miRNAs as key mediators of bone regeneration which can be harnessed in a regenerative context as systemic therapies or in combination with advanced materials for local repair.

Postdoctoral Researchers

Ananya S Pushpa

Email: SHANKAAN@tcd.ie

Ananya S Pushpa is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Hoey Lab. She obtained her PhD in Immunology in 2025 from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). Her current research focuses on understanding the role of the local mechanical environment in regulating immune responses during bone repair. Specifically, her research aims to investigate how mechanical loading influences immune cell phenotype and the regenerative environment during fracture healing using in vivo models.

PhD Researchers

Rosario Milazzo

Email: milazzor@tcd.ie

Rosario is a first year PhD student who completed his Bachelor's and Master's degree at Politecnico di Torino in Biomedical Engineering, specializing in Bionanotechnologies. He completed his thesis at Merkel Lab of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität of Munich, on the development of a microfluidic approach for the synthesis of lipid-polymer hybrid nanoparticles for siRNA delivery.
His current work in the Hoey Lab focuses on the the development of cartilage and synovium models on-a-chip.

Luke Madden

Email: maddenlu@tcd.ie

Luke is a second year PhD researcher in the Hoey Lab. He completed his Bachelor’s degree in Biophysical Chemistry in University College Dublin (UCD), during which he gained an interest in tissue engineering. He then joined the Hoey Lab with the CDT in Advanced Characterisation of Materials. His work is on microphysiological models of bone for the development and characterisation of a model of osteoarthritis-on-a-chip.

Matilde Tanganelli

Email: TANGANEM@tcd.ie

Matilde Tanganelli is a first-year PhD student. She earned her Master's degree in Medical Biotechnology from the University of Bologna and Bachelor's degree in Biotechnology at the University of Pavia. Her current research in the Hoey Lab aims to decipher the contribution of local mechanics on immune cell phenotype and function during bone repair. She is working to harness this knowledge to develop novel mechano-biologics and mechano-immunomodulatory materials that target the early regenerative niche in order to modulate inflammation and promote bone repair in compromised environments such as osteoporosis.

Irene Dueñas

Email: DUEASREA@tcd.ie

Irene is a first-year PhD student. She completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Biomedical Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) and Trinity College Dublin (TCD), respectively, specialising in Tissue Engineering. She completed her MSc thesis at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) on scaffold-based electrotherapy for chronic wound repair. Her current research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of mechanotransduction in human macrophages during bone repair, investigating how strain magnitude regulates macrophage phenotype. Her work aims to harness these mechanisms to develop mechano-biologic strategies and mechano-immunomodulatory scaffolds to modulate the regenerative immune environment and promote bone repair.

Andrea Paolo Loffredo Senesi

Email: loffreda@tcd.ie

Andrea Paolo Loffredo Senesi is a first-year PhD student. He completed his Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering, specialising in Bionanotechnologies, from Politecnico di Torino and his Bachelor's degree in Medical Systems Engineering from Politecnico di Bari. His current research in the Hoey Lab aims to decipher the mechanisms of mechanosignaling during bone repair, with a particular focus on extracellular vesicles and their role in mediating the effects of local mechanics on immune cell function. He is working to harness this knowledge to develop novel mechano-biologics and mechano-immunomodulatory strategies to modulate inflammation and promote bone repair in compromised environments such as osteoporosis.

Bianca Batista

Email: BBATISTA@tcd.ie

Bianca Batista is a first-year PhD student in Bioengineering at the University of Notre Dame and a visiting PhD student in the Hoey Lab. She earned her Bachelor's degree in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Notre Dame. Her research in the TIME Lab investigates how the mechanical landscape of the tumor microenvironment shapes immune cell phenotype and function. During her time in the Hoey Lab, she is developing three-dimensional models of the bone marrow microenvironment to investigate how matrix architecture influences the progression of bone marrow malignancies such as multiple myeloma, with the broader goal of developing physiologically relevant platforms for studying bone marrow health and disease.

Ruth Gregg

Email:

Irene is a first-year PhD student. She completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Biome

Linda Maggi

Email:

Irene is a first-year PhD student. She completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Biome

Anis Allahdiniyan

Email: anis.allahdiniyan@polimi.it

Anis is a PhD candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. Her research focuses on fracture mechanics, specifically on determining stress intensity factors from crack opening profiles (COP). She completed her Master's research in the Hoey Lab and has continued working with the lab since then on developing the COP method. She now works in close collaboration with the Hoey Lab and Prof. David Taylor's group at Trinity College Dublin on developing and validating the COP method, alongside Linda Maggi.

MSc Students

TBA

Email: 

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Alumni