
E-mail: j.rouwkema@utwente.nl
Vasileios Trikalitis (1990) obtained his bachelor degree in Material Science at the University of Patras in 2014. His thesis focused on the creation and confinement of molecular structures inside carbon nanotubes. In 2016 he obtained his Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering with a specialization in Tissue Regeneration and Bionanotechnology. His thesis was completed in the DBE (Developmental Bio Engineering) at the University of Twente in collaboration with the POF (Physics of Fluids) group. The focus of the thesis was the development of a novel 3D bioprinting technique named In Air Microfluidics (IAMF) which combined microfluidics and 3D printing principles with an aim to produce a tissue reconstruction platform. He has also worked as a research intern in the Danish Technical University (DTU) on the creation of cell-mimicking organelles that can conduct cascade reaction for the purpose of theranostics.
In 2017, he started as a PhD student in the Biomechanical Engineering department under the supervision of Prof. Jeroen Rouwkema. His research focuses on the development of vascular networks in artificial tissue constructs, using 3D (bio)printing approaches.
E-mail: v.trikalitis@utwente.nl

Previous members

E-mail: a.k.kandar@utwente.nl


In 2017, she started as a postdoc in the Biomechanical Engineering department under the supervision of Prof. Jeroen Rouwkema. Her research focuses on the development of vascular networks in artificial tissue constructs.
E-mail: n.salehinik@utwente.nl

Throughout her studies, she did a research internship (2019) at the Luxembourg Institute of Research and Technology - LIST on the development of a high-performance polymer nanocomposite with electro-conductive properties for space applications. Her master’s thesis (2020) was done at the company GRADEL in Luxembourg and was focused on the optimization of a newly developed filament winding process to produce ultra-light-weight composite structures. She was afterwards hired by the same company as a Materials Engineer and was responsible for overseeing R&D projects as part of the space qualification of the endless filament winding process developed in-house.
In 2022, she started her PhD in the Design, Production and Management department in collaboration with the Engineering Organ Support Technologies department under the supervision of Prof. Ian Gibson, Prof. Jeroen Rouwkema and Dr. Constantinos Goulas. Her research focuses on the application of local mechanical stimulation on 3D-(bio)printed constructs inside a granular gel supporting medium.
E-mail: m.elakkawi@utwente.nl


Pardis received her BS. Degree (2010) in Mechanical Engineering from Shiraz University. She joined Shiraz University (2014-2015) as junior researcher. She mainly worked on computational biofluid mechanics, simulation and tracking of aerosols in respiratory system. In 2018, she obtained her Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Polytechnic of Milan with specification of Biomaterials and Biomechanics. During her Master thesis, she worked on performing a novel multistep surface coating on Magnesium alloy which can be utilized as biocompatible biodegradable implants in different sectors such as cardiovascular stents and orthopedic implants. She used MAO/EPA technology to create the desired coating on Magnesium to decrease its degradation rate in order to support the tissue for the needed period of healing time. The risk of cytotoxicity induced by the surface treatment was evaluated by the alamarBlue® Assay.
During her internship at University of Melbourne (2018), she mainly focused on melt electrospinning of natural polymer blends as main constituent of cartilage extracellular matrix. She exploited the capacity of collagen and elastin to construct 3D printed scaffolds.
E-mail: p.farjam@utwente.nl


Prasanna has received Erasmus Traineeship abroad scholarship for which he worked at UCB, Belgium. At UCB, he also received an Focused Recognition Award for enabling his team to make data-driven decision on the cell line assessment study. In 2019, he represented University of Twente at Utrecht for FameLab National Finals, a popular international science communication competition.
For his PhD Project, Prasanna is working towards creating efficient engineering tools to probe, perturb and predict the evolution of vascular networks in invivo, invitro and insilico models. He focuses on three main topics; 1. Understanding the vascular development processes in the developing chicken embryo using multi-mode imaging 2. Tuning the vascular network and organization using external localized fluid flows and geometrical shapes 3. Predicting the evolution of vascular network types using computational models and Artificial Intelligence (AI), when different mechanical and chemical signals are applied He supervised 4 Bachelor thesis and 2 Master thesis assignments. Apart from research, Prasanna appreciate and participate in public speaking and science communication events (like FameLab, Science Cafe) to promote science to the general audience and being creative when it comes to cooking, drawing and making crafts from recycled items. As an outgoing person, he also enjoy organizing social events and very active in Twitter.
E-mail: p.padmanaban@utwente.nl Website: www.prasanna.biz


In 2017, she started as a PhD student in the Biomechanical Engineering department under the supervision of Prof. Jeroen Rouwkema. Her research focuses on the patterning of growth factors in space and time via hydrogel modifications for vascular tissue engineering.
E-mail: d.rana@utwente.nl


In 2017, he started as a PhD student in the Biomechanical Engineering department under the supervision of Prof. Jeroen Rouwkema. His research focuses on the effect of fluid flow profiles on the development and organization of vascular networks in artificial tissue constructs.
E-mail: f.stein@utwente.nl


In 2017, she started as a PhD student in the Biomechanical Engineering department under the supervision of Prof. Jeroen Rouwkema. Her research focuses on the development of vascular networks in artificial tissue constructs using tissue building block approaches.
E-mail: j.zhang-6@utwente.nl
Previous members

In 2017, he started as a PhD student in the Biomechanical Engineering department under the supervision of Prof. Jeroen Rouwkema. His research focuses on the development of vascular networks in artificial tissue constructs, using 3D (bio)printing approaches.
E-mail: v.trikalitis@utwente.nl


After that, she started her Master's degree in Bioengineering Technologies at the University of Twente (UT). During her Master, she worked at VyCAP, a spin-off company founded from the research group Medical Cell BioPhysics of the UT. Her main work was based on setting up and optimizing the workflow for PSA secretion of LNCaP cells and IgG detection using PVDF membranes.
She is currently doing her Master's thesis in the biomechanical engineering department under the supervision of Mira El Akkawi. Her research focuses on magnetic bioinks based on hydrogels with embedded iron particles that allow their deformation, which could be used as a mechanical stimulation when in combination with cells.

Previous members

In 2020, he started his masters in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Twente, focussing on the Bioengineering Technologies track and having additional courses in fluid mechanics and microfluidics. He has fulfilled extended experiments involving bioprinting for Vascularization Lab in cooperation with Deepti Rana during his masters. His master’s assignment will also be conducted at Vascularization Lab involving 3D bioprinting.




In 2018 he started his master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University and is now performing his internship at the Vascularization Lab under the supervision of Vasileios Trikalitis. In his project he is evaluating the effect of different embedding bath materials on HUVEC and SMC spheroids using suspension bioprinting.




In 2017 I carried out my internship at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering of the ETH Zurich, analyzing Schistosoma m. on a microfluidic platform in collaboration with the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute.
In my former position, till August 2015, I was working as a test engineer for Dresden MOS design GmbH. I was responsible for the development of test hard- and software for automotive ICs (integrated circuits) and for the standardization of those tasks on a specific test platform (T2000) – no, not the liquid metal assassin (T1000) from Terminator 2 – Judgement Day.
I received my first degree in electrical engineering (Dipl.-Ing. (FH)) in 2011 from the University of Applied Sciences in Dresden (HTW Dresden), while working at the Klippel GmbH – a specialist for audio R&D and mass production measurement kits.
My general interests are related to all sorts of engineering disciplines and natural sciences, but also more and more metal machining. Apart from that I appreciate dancing as a member of Arabesque (Modern Dance) and being creative when it comes to cooking and baking. Of course I also like to share my prepared stuff with friends and colleagues.


In 2016 she started a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering in the UT with a specialization in Bionanotechnology and Advanced Biomanufacturing. During her Master, she was a research intern at NIFE institute (Hannover, Germany), investigating the properties of decellularised porcine pericardium scaffolds for tissue engineered heart valves replacements. She is currently pursuing her Master thesis in the Vascularization Lab, where her research focuses on the induction of angiogenesis through suspension bioprinting.


In 2017, she started a Master program at the University of Twente and she is currently studying Biomedical Engineering with the specialization track of Bionanotechnology and Biomanufacturing. Nowadays, she is collaborating with Vascularization Lab under the supervision of Fabian Stein. Her interest is to study the influence of mechanical stimulation on cardiomyogenic differentiation.





