DrMagdalene Ho

Dr Magdalene Ho is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. Her research sits at the intersection of biomaterials engineering, nanotechnology, and tissue repair, with a focus on developing cell-responsive, DNA-enabled nanomaterials, known as Traction force-Activated Payloads (TrAPs), that harness the body's own mechanical forces to harvest and deliver endogenous growth factors for tissue repair.

Magdalene completed her PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Imperial as an EPSRC iCASE and 1851 Royal Commission Industrial Fellow, in collaboration with Convatec, under the supervision of Dr Ben Almquist. Her doctoral work demonstrated that force-responsive biomaterials can promote tissue repair through cell-activated delivery of endogenous biologics. She also undertook a visiting research fellowship at the University of Washington with Prof Cole DeForest, on photopatterning of instructive biomaterials. Prior to her doctorate, she obtained a First Class MEng in Biomedical Engineering from Imperial, including an industrial placement at Novartis R&D Switzerland.

Magdalene is a recipient of the 2024 June Wilson Award (London Materials Society, IOM3). She is also the CEO and Co-founder of Traxion Biotech, a spin-out from Imperial. The company was founded following a UKRI Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) grant to translate TrAPs technology from Imperial towards patients with difficult-to-heal injuries.