Professor Stuart Reid

Personal statement

Prof Stuart Reid FRSE is Head of Department and Royal Society Industry Fellow in Biomedical Engineering.  He works in a multidisciplinary team working across medical and astrophysics/quantum research areas. He is co-inventor of “nanokicking”, where nanoscale vibrations are used to persuade stem cells to turn into bone in the lab (ACS Nano 2013, Nature BME 2017). He is in the process of co-founding a company (www.nanokick.com) to help supply bone graft (the most transplanted tissue after blood) for regenerative medicine. UK Charity, Find A Better Way (https://www.findabetterway.org.uk) is funding the first-in-man study of nanokicked stem cells, planned for 2024/25, with the aim to provide bone graft for patients injured by land mines. The first in vivo study of nanokicking using wearable vibration devices was trialed in partnership with the Scottish Centre for Innovation in Spinal Cord Injury at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.02.12.578222). Reid's lab is also developing and manufacturing some of the most advanced laser mirrors in the world, to enable future gravitational wave detectors to be limited entirely by quantum effects. The team has pioneered the first high-energy ECR (electron cyclotron resonance) ion beam deposition facility, manufacturing the world’s lowest absorption sputtered amorphous silicon (PRL 2018) and highest sp3 content sputtered diamond-like carbon (paper in preparation). Reid is Director of the Extreme Performance Optical Coatings testbed (www.epoc.scot) located within the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland.