Ruth Mackay

Dr Ruth Mackay is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering, Design and Physical Sciences at Brunel University London. She leads the multidisciplinary Organ-on-a-Chip (OOC) Group and has been with Brunel since 2011, initially as a Research Fellow and from 2015 as Lecturer/Senior Lecturer.

She earned a BEng in Mechanical Engineering (2007) and a PhD in Micro-electromechanical Systems (2011), both from the University of Dundee, supported by an EPSRC CASE grant with IDB Technologies.

Research Interests

• Organ-on-a-chip technologies focusing on women’s health (vagina, ovaries, placenta, breast)
• Low-cost point-of-care diagnostic devices for infectious diseases
• Prosthetics and 3D scanning for transtibial amputees
• Soft robotics and microfluidic systems
• Medical device engineering and finite element analysis

Her recent work has concentrated on smartphone-based 3D scanning of prosthetic sockets, dynamic coupling in transtibial prosthetics, and fabrication of electrospun scaffolds for tissue growth. These efforts intersect biomedical engineering, biomechanics, and translational medicine.

Scientific & Professional Memberships

• MIEEE – Member, IEEE
• AMIMechE – Associate Member, Institution of Mechanical Engineers
• Member, Biochemical Society
• Member, European Organ-on-Chip Society (EUROoCs)
• Member, European Low Gravity Research Association

Teaching & Supervision

• Module leader: ME3622 Mechanical Engineering Structures, ME3626 Vehicle Structures and FEA, ME5678 Medical Device Engineering, ME5692 Group Project (MEng)
• PhD supervision in organ-on-a-chip, microfluidics, and point-of-care diagnostics

Laboratory & Teams

Dr Mackay heads the Organ-on-a-Chip Group at Brunel, bringing together toxicologists, engineers, life scientists, and bioinformaticians to develop microphysiological systems for women’s health research.