PEOPLE

Delphine Gourdon, Professor

Royal Society Wolfson Fellow

Lead Technology Touching Life Theme

Division of Biomedical Engineering

James Watt School of Engineering

email: Delphine.Gourdon@glasgow.ac.uk

Dr. Delphine Gourdon joined the James Watt School of Engineering at University of Glasgow (UK) as a full professor in 2020. She is the PI of the Mechanobiology and Tribology Laboratory, which belongs to the Division of Biomedical Engineering. In 2022, she also became the Head of the Technology Touching Life Theme of the new cross-disciplinary Advanced Research Centre.

Delphine received her BS in Applied Physics from University of Bordeaux (France) in 1995, and her PhD in Physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) in 1999 for work done in nanomechanics and nanotribology. She was then a Swiss NSF postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Jacob Israelachvili's laboratory at UC Santa Barbara (CA, USA) where she addressed a variety of research issues in the fields of surface and polymer science with an emphasis on biomaterials, in particular on bioadhesion and biolubrication by nano-films of adhesive proteins and polysaccharides. Delphine next complemented her expertise in bioengineering by joining the Laboratory for Biologically Oriented Materials of Prof. Viola Vogel at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ, Switzerland) as a senior scientist, working on cell adhesion and extracellular matrix proteins, in particular the mechanotransducer protein: fibronectin. In 2010, Delphine was hired as an assistant professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of Cornell University (NY, USA), before joining the Department of Physics at University of Ottawa (ON, Canada) as an associate professor in 2016.

Dr. Fei Wu

phone: (607) 279-2581

email: fw225@cornell.edu

Fei Wu received her B.S. degree in Macromolecular Materials and Engineering at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. She then earned her PhD in Materials Science at Cornell University (June 2016) and she is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Gourdon group. Her research project focuses on developing biomaterials platforms to help elucidate the mechanisms of breast cancer metastasis to bone. More specifically, Fei's goals are to (i) generate hydroxyapatite (HAP, closely related to bone apatite) facets with controlled materials properties, (ii) characterise the HAP-induced altered deposition of the ECM protein fibronectin, and (iii) investigate how HAP-induced ECM alterations affect breast cancer cells functions.

Javad Eslami

phone: (819) 319-1623

email: jesla070@uottawa.ca

Prior to joining the Gourdon group as a Ph.D. Physics student in 2020, Javad received a M.S. degree in Biophysics at University of Tehran in July 2018. He is currently working on mechanobiology in the context of cancer; more specifically, his project focuses on the design and fabrication of tuneable 3D collagen - fibronectin platforms that mimic the tumour microenvironment, as well as on the structural and mechanical characterisation of the resulting cell-free and cell-laden cancer-mimicking platforms, through confocal microscopy and rheometry, respectively.

Sierra Cook

phone: (510) 529-9075

email: sgc73@cornell.edu

Sierra G. Cook received her B.S. degree in Physics at UC Berkeley, California. Sierra is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Applied and Engineering Physics under the supervision of Prof Gourdon in collaboration with Prof Larry Bonassar (BME, Cornell). Her research projects focus on the biolubrication by natural and synthetic polymers within model mica surfaces using the Surface Forces Apparatus. 

Naveena Janakiraman Narayanan

phone: (613) 869-5035

email: njana050@uottawa.ca

Prior to joining the Gourdon group as a Master of Science student in the Biomedical Engineering program, Naveena received her B.Tech. degree in Biomedical Engineering at SRM University of Tamil Nadu (India), after completing a semester of her Bachelor Program at NUS (Singapore). Her research project focuses on unraveling the correlation between aggregation mechanisms and lubrication in albumin thin films under shear, using the Surface Forces Apparatus.

Parisa Sadeghi

phone: (613) 698-2701

email: psade009@uottawa.ca

Prior to joining the Gourdon group as a Master of Science Physics student, Parisa received her B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering at University of Zanjan, Iran. Her research projects focus on the mechanical and rheological characterisation of cell-deposited extracellular matrices and 3D engineered protein scaffolds using a custom-made micromechanical device and a rheometer.

Maryam Asadishekari.

phone: (613) 400-7357

email: masad041@uottawa.ca

Prior to coming to University of Ottawa, Maryam received her B.S. degree in Materials Engineering at Tehran Polytechnic, Iran. She is currently pursuing a Master of Science (M. Sc.) degree in Biomedical Engineering under the supervision of Prof Gourdon. Her research projects focus on the design and engineering of collagen - fibronectin scaffolds for wound healing and cancer research.

Mihir Samak

phone: (343) 988-4824 

email: msama042@uottawa.ca

Prior to coming to University of Ottawa, Mihir received his B.S. degree in Software Engineering at University of Pune, India. He is currently pursuing a Master of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering under the supervision of Prof Gourdon. His research projects focus on the characterisation of lubrication and wear protection of lubricin-mimetics systems, using the Surface Forces Apparatus.

Halimo Aden

Biolubrication project

Zian Shahid, COOP

ECM in cancer project

Simardeep Dhindsa

ECM in cancer project

Yassmine Chahid Chentouf

3D scaffolds for cancer research project