Our Team
The ReMed project has a strong team of people with a diverse background and skill set, and a shared commitment to developing novel technologies, solving problems, and making tangible impact to promote CE in small medical devices sector.
The multidisciplinary research team involves 5 senior academics and 7 researchers from Loughborough University and University of Leeds whose expertise include design, materials, business and operations, health economics, and reprocessing.
The ReMed project focuses on collaborative effort and joined-up thinking to achieve the project aims and objectives. Professional development is constantly encouraged in order to give our team the best future opportunities to realise their own personal ambitions.
Investigators
Prof Shahin Rahimifard, Professor of Sustainable Engineering, Wolfson School, Loughborough University
Shahin is the Founder and Director of
Centre for Sustainable Manufacturing and Recycling Technologies (SMART). His research is focused on sustainability issues throughout a ‘product lifecycle’, including projects on sustainable design, resource-efficient manufacturing, sustainable circular business models, and remanufacturing/recycling technologies. These projects have benefited from involvement of several high-profile global manufacturers and retailers, which include Rolls-Royce, JLR, GM, Nike, NB, Clarks, Next, Unilever, PepsiCo, M&S, and Tesco. Shahin is the Editor-in-Chief of the ‘International Journal of Sustainable Engineering’ and has over 200 refereed publications associated with his work. Shahin is leading the Work Package 2d (reprocessing) and is also responsible for the overall project management tasks.
Prof Richard Bibb, Associate Dean Research, School of Art & Design, Nottingham Trent University
Richard has 25 years’ experience in the application of advanced design technologies in healthcare, rehabilitation, and surgery. He has expertise in the design of medical devices, particularly custom-fitting and personalised orthoses and prostheses. In 2014 he founded the Digital Design & Fabrication research group at Loughborough University and led it until 2023 and coordinated the multidisciplinary Loughborough University Additive Manufacturing Network. He is a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and served on the EPSRC Healthcare Technologies Strategic Advisory Team 2014-17. He has contributed to more than 100 peer reviewed papers and research projects attracting more than £18M in funding from UKRI, EU, and more within industry. Richard is leading the Work Package 2a (Design) in ReMed Project.
Prof. Peter Culmer, Professor of Healthcare Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds
Peter Culmer is Professor of Healthcare Engineering, leading the Healthcare Mechatronics research group at the University of Leeds. His research concerns the development of sensing and medical device technology and their application to address global healthcare challenges, with a particular focus on under-represented groups and conditions. Peter is committee member of the UK IMechE Biomedical Engineering Division (BMeD) and engineering representative of the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) Surgical MedTech Cooperative. He leads a multinational and interdisciplinary team in developing RAIS, a novel surgical system for low-resource settings as well as clinically-focused assessment methods for Diabetic Foot Ulceration. Pete is leading the Work Package 2b (Materials) in ReMed Project.
Prof. Antuela Tako, Professor in Operational Research, Loughborough Business School
Antuela leads the Simulation Practice Research Interest Group and is Director of Programme Quality at Loughborough Business School. She is an expert in using systems modelling tools (including simulation, systems mapping, and conceptual modelling) to improve business processes, applied primarily in healthcare, supply chain and circular economy. Antuela's research focuses on alternative simulation approaches, participative simulation, conceptual modelling, problem structuring and behavioural simulation. She is the co-founder of PartiSim (www.partisim.org) and she has contributed to more than 60 peer-reviewed papers. Antuela is a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and she has been involved in successful externally funded projects by the EPSRC, National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), Health Foundation and by external public and private sector organisations. Antuela is a Co-Investigator in the Re-Med project co-leading the Business, Operational, & Behavioural Workpackage (2c).
Dr Armando Vargas-Palacios, Senior Research Fellow, Academic Unit of Health Economics, University of Leeds
Dr Vargas-Palacios, holds a PhD in Health Economics from the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the economic evaluation of medical interventions, new technologies, treatment pathways, and medical devices. He is an expert on the use of simulation techniques (such as discrete event simulation) to evaluate system wide implications of the implementing a new technology or an alternative treatment pathway. He is part of the
NIHR Surgical MedTech Cooperative, Leeds, as an expert in Health Economics, which supports the development of new technologies in the field of surgery aimed at improving health care provision and quality of life for the patients. Armando is co-leading the Work Package 2c (Business, Operations and Economics) in ReMed Project.
Administration
Dr Robin Rainier, Research Project Administrative Officer, Wolfson School, Loughborough University
Robin is the Administrative Officer for the ReMed Project and is based in the Wolfson School at Loughborough University. Robin obtained a PhD from the University of Strathclyde in 2008 in the field of Process Analytical Chemistry and undertook postdoctoral research in the field of underwater acoustics. Robin has since worked within the Energy sector and now enjoys working within Higher Education Professional services, with a specialist interest in Research Administration.
Researchers
Dr Denis Sleath, Researcher, Wolfson School, Loughborough University
Denis is qualified in mechanical (BSc), manufacturing (MSc), and product engineering (PhD). He has over 30 years industrial experience in engineering design, analysis, and production, working on projects in aerospace, automotive, defence, nuclear, mining, and medical devices. His area of expertise is predicting the variation behaviour of mechanical systems due to the inherent geometric variation in the manufacture, assembly, inspection, and operation of the component parts. He has led 3D tolerance analysis, mapping the organisation, and processing and control of technical work across multiple projects within an engineering company. His current ReMed interests are enhancing design engineering to aid reprocessing and promote a circular economy, developing the capability to enable effective and viable reprocessing of SMDs.
Dr Nathaniel Kaill, Research Associate, Design School, Loughborough University
Nathaniel has a PhD in Additive Manufacturing from Loughborough University, a Masters in Advanced Manufacturing Systems and Technology from The University of Liverpool, and a Bachelors in Aerospace Systems Engineering from Coventry University. His role in ReMed project is to investigate and address relevant aspects of Design that can be applied. Building upon previous work in the field of design for circular economy, he is well placed for the evaluation of our case study products, producing design alterations and potential product redesigns that would represent an improvement from a circular economy perspective. He has been active in design for the past 9 years, with experience working on previous research projects and collaboration.
Dr Swati Jindal, Research Fellow, University of Leeds
Swati holds a PhD in Biomaterial Development and Additive Manufacturing and a MSc in Tissue Engineering. She has worked on several projects on designing of personalised medical devices, and development of novel biomaterials for additive manufacturing of medical implants and point of care devices. She is a member of the ReMed team and responsible for the material selection for circular economy of medical devices. She is developing a framework to encourage stakeholders to explore different materials for a variety of small medical devices and how the material modifications can lead to a sustainable circular economy of medical devices.
Bana Quronfuleh, Research Assistant, Wolfson School, Loughborough University
Bana graduated with a Product Design Engineering BEng (Hons) degree from Loughborough University in 2022. Bana is currently a Research Assistant in the ReMed project at Loughborough University, and responsible for the end-of-life design and recycling of the small medical devices. Her expertise lies in implementing the design process with an emphasis on Circular Economy and sustainable design practices. She is well-versed in conducting Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and interpreting and using LCA results to improve product design.
Dr Federico Zocco, Research Associate, Wolfson School, Loughborough University
Federico received the B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and the M.S. in Robotics and Automation Engineering from University of Pisa in 2013 and 2016, respectively, and the Ph.D. in Applied Machine Learning from Queen’s University Belfast in 2021. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher with the Centre for Sustainable Manufacturing and Recycling Technologies (SMART) at Loughborough University. His main areas of expertise are robotics, automation, compartmental dynamical thermodynamics, and deep learning for computer vision. Dr Zocco’s role in the ReMed project is to leverage the latest advances in AI and robotics for remanufacturing and waste sorting of small medical devices.
Dr Ramzi Fayad, Research Fellow, Faculty of Medicine & Health, University of Leeds
Ramzi has obtained his PhD in Manufacturing Engineering and Operations Management from Nottingham University, and currently is a research fellow in ReMed Project at the University of Leeds. With more than 10 years of experience in commercial and academic fields, his research interests are Circular Economy, System Optimisation, Condition Monitoring, Vibration Analysis, and Operational Research. He is passionate about implementing data driven solutions to solve lean production/management problems across various business sectors, and an expert in coordinating and improvement all aspects of human and non-human business systems/processes through analytical modelling and simulation techniques.
Mohd Shoaib, Research Associate, School of Business and Economics, Loughborough University
Shoaib holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and master’s degree in industrial engineering from India. Shoaib’s PhD research involves systematically analysing and optimising the delivery of public primary and secondary healthcare services and has submitted his PhD thesis to the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. His research interests lay in the application of simulation modelling and optimisation-based approaches to healthcare delivery systems and supply chains among others. He has 2-years of international work experience in Saudi Arabia and India. Shoaib was a visiting research scholar to the University of Exeter Business School under the Newton-Bhabha fellowship.
ReMed
Email: admin@ReMed.uk
Phone: (44) 01509 225400