This page celebrates the achievements and activities of the Armstrong Group. For publications please see here.
December 2025 – Celebrating Sammy Shorthouse passing his PhD viva with his thesis “Morphometric Analysis and Prediction of 3D Cell Models”.
October 2025 – Leaving dinner to celebrate Farnaz Ghorbani’s time in the group.
October 2025 – James visiting Limerick and Galway for invited talks hosted by Dr Eoghan Cunnane and Dr Andrew Daly.
September 2025 – Celebrating Patrick Buchanan and Mia Massaad completing their MRes projects on 3D printing for cardiovascular grafts and bone tissue engineering, respectively.
August 2025 – Jie Huang and Amanda Gong completing their STEM projects in the group on acoustic cell patterning.
July 2025 – James attending the GRC Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering in Barcelona
July 2025 – Hosting Dr Andrew Daly (Galway) for a talk on “Bioprinting Human Heart Models: From Stem Cells to Functional Tissues“
June 2025 – Chairing the Tissue & Cell Engineering Society (TCES) Annual Conference 2025 in Bristol
April 2025 – Ice cream social!
February 2025 – Lunar New Year!
January 2025 – Hosting Prof Mikhail Shapiro (Caltech) for a talk on “Talking to Cells: Biomolecular Ultrasound for Non-Invasive Imaging and Control of Cellular Function“
December 2024 – Christmas Party!
September 2024 – James joins a University of Bristol delegation visiting the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru.
August 2024 – Crazy golf leaving do for Elliot Johnson-Hall, Kaoutar Amery, and Samia Essaboui, who all worked on new collagen-based biomaterials for printing and tissue regeneration.
April 2024 – Camila Tovani giving an invited talk at the British Society for Matrix Biology, with Olivia Johnson-Hall and Olivia Camilleri also presenting a poster
March 2024 – James giving an invited talk at the 6th International Conference on Additive Manufacturing and Biomanufacturing and undertaking a visit to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
March 2024 – James and Zhipeng Deng visiting the laboratories of Prof. Liliang Ouyang at Tsinghua University (Beijing).
February 2024 – Hosting Prof. Liliang Ouyang (Tsinghua University) for a talk on “Enabling Bioinks and Bioprinting for 3D Cell Culture and Tissue Engineering“
January 2024 – Camila Tovani leaving the Armstrong Group to take up a permanent academic position at Sorbonne University. Congratulations Camila!!
December 2023 – Christmas Party!
November 2023 – Impulsonics launching at Future Space Bristol
www.impulsonics.com
November 2023 – James and Norah-Jane Prendergast co-hosting the GW4 Innovations in Brain Tissue Engineering conference at the University of Bristol. Congratulations to Norah-Jane for winning the poster prize!
November 2023 – Welcoming new group members with pizza and drinks at the Robin Hood
October 2023 – James, Martha Lavelle, and Aya Elghajiji visiting Prof. Peer Fischer and Dr Daniela Duarte Campos in Heidelberg, and attending the EMBL Organoids: Modelling Organ Development and Disease in 3D
September 2023 – Hosting the TCESNet Summer School: Patterning Cells with Sound, in which nine researchers from around Europe visited to learn about acoustic cell patterning.
August 2023 – Norah-Jane Prendergast and Farnaz Ghorbani undertaking a three-week placement in Tsinghua University (Beijing) working in the laboratory of Prof. Liliang Ouyang!
June 2023 – Zhipeng Deng reaching the finals of the University of Bristol Three Minute Thesis competition with her excellent presentation “Injectable Gels: Healing Broken Bones from the Inside Out“
June 2023 – Celebrating Camila Tovani securing a permanent academic position at Sorbonne University!
December 2022 – Christmas Party!
January 2023 – Lunar New Year!
March 2022 – James receiving his President’s Award and Medal for Excellence in Education at the Royal Albert Hall, London, for his exemplary pastoral care of PhD students.
In 2023, James co-founded the University of Bristol spin-out company Impulsonics, which aims to use acoustic biotechnologies to streamline cell culture and tissue engineering. The company is based at Future Space and is led by CEO Dr Luke Cox. James currently serves as Scientific Advisor. More information can be found at www.impulsonics.com.
In May 2020, Dr Armstrong set up Virtual Seminars in Biomedical Science with Dr Brian Aguado (UCSD) to provide a platform for PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to share their research during the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns. This series continued across the pandemic, co-chaired by Dr Natalie Kirkland (UCSD) and Dr Sarah Quackenbush (Duke), with 87 fantastic seminars and over 1500 registrants from across the world. We concluded in September 2021 with a keynote address from Prof. Jason Burdick.
Talks are being uploaded, where possible, to our YouTube channel – please subscribe to receive updates. In October 2021, Virtual Seminars in Biomedical Science was featured in this Nature Reviews Materials comment “community-driven online initiatives have reshaped scientific engagement.”