Molly Stevens

Molly Stevens is currently Professor of Biomedical Materials and Regenerative Medicine and the Research Director for Biomedical Material Sciences in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College. She joined Imperial in 2004 after a Postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Professor Robert Langer in the Chemical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prior to this she graduated from Bath University with a First Class Honours degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences and was then awarded a PhD in biophysical investigations of specific biomolecular interactions and single biomolecule mechanics from the Laboratory of Biophysics and Surface Analysis at the University of Nottingham (2000).

In 2010 she was recognized by The Times as one of the top ten scientists under the age of 40 and also received the Polymer International-IUPAC award for creativity in polymer science, the Rosenhain medal and the Norman Heatley Prize for Interdisciplinary research from the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2009 she was awarded the Jean Leray Award from the European Society for Biomaterials, in 2007 the prestigious Conference Science Medal from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and in 2005 the Philip Leverhulme Prize for Engineering. She has also recently been recognized by the TR100, a compilation of the top innovators, under the age of 35, who are transforming technology - and the world with their work. Her previous awards include the Ronald Belcher Memorial Lecture Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry (2000) and both the Janssen Prize and the UpJohn Prize for academic excellence and research. In 2010 Molly was awarded the RSC Norman Heatley Prize and the IOM3 Rosenhain Medal and Prize, In 2012 Molly was awarded the Griffith Prize and medal from IOM3. In 2012 she presented the Royal Society Clifford Patterson Lecture, and in 2013, she was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

She has a large and extremely multidisciplinary research group of students and postdocs/fellows. The group is focused on both high quality fundamental science and translation for human health. Research in regenerative medicine within her group includes the directed differentiation of stem cells, the design of novel bioactive scaffolds and new approaches towards tissue regeneration. She has developed novel approaches to tissue engineering that are likely to prove very powerful in the engineering of large quantities of human mature bone for autologous transplantation as well as other vital organs such as liver and pancreas, which have proven elusive with other approaches. This has led to moves to translate the technology (including the founding of spin-out companies). In the field of nanotechnology the group has current research efforts in exploiting specific biomolecular recognition and self-assembly mechanisms to create new dynamic nano-materials, biosensors and drug delivery systems. Recent efforts by the Stevens group in peptide-functionalised nanoparticles for enzyme biosensing have enabled the most sensitive facile enzyme detection to date and have a host of applications across diseases ranging from cancer to global health applications.