Dr Pierre-Olivier Bagnaninchi is a principal investigator at the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine (CMVM), at the (UoE), affiliated to the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine. Pierre-Olivier studied theoretical physics (MSc, 97) before moving to the field of biomedical engineering. He obtained his PhD in biomedical engineering in 2001 from the University of Grenoble, France in partnership with Thales. He then accepted a two-year post-doctoral position at McGill University in Prof. Maryam Tabrizian lab to develop impedance-based biosensors for tissue engineering applications. In 2004, he joined as a post-doctoral research associate the Institute of Science and Technology for Medicine at Keele University (UK) under the supervision of Prof. Alicia El Haj and Professor Ruikang Wang to conduct research on optical coherence tomography. In 2008 he was awarded a 5-year RCUK fellowship at the University of Edinburgh, where he has been appointed principal investigator in 2013.

His main research interest is the development of label-free quantitative monitoring technologies to monitor cell and differentiation proliferation in 2D and 3D cell cultures (organoids, gels and scaffolds). To this end, we currently investigate optical coherence tomography, impedance sensing and their combination into organ-on-a chip technologies to map biophysical properties (mechanical, optical, flow, electrical) of cells and tissues. They also address the need for real-time monitoring of 3D (spheroids, organoids) in vitro disease models, and the need to monitor tissue repair in pre-clinical studies.