Javad Tavakoli Sydney Spinal Symposium 2022

Javad Tavakoli

Dr Javad Tavakoli moved to the University of Technology Sydney after being awarded the prestigious Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship in January 2020. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow (2018-2020) of China-Australia International Laboratory for Health Technologies (ILHT) in Medical Devices Research Institute (MDRI) and Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology (INST) at Flinders Univesrity. His PhD research at Flinders University mainly focused on understanding the structure-function relationship in soft tissues that resulted in novel findings describing the ultrastructural organisation and mechanical function of elastic fibres in the intervertebral disc. He was awarded Flinders University Chancellor’s Best HDR publication (2017), prestigious Spinal Research Award (2019) and The Clayton Adam Award (2018) from Spine Society of Australia, Best Reviewer Award from Acta Biomaterialia journal (2019), Publication of the Year 2020 (ANZSB - 2021), and AOSpine 2022 Discovery and Innovation Award (AOSpine & AO Fundation, Switzerland-2022). New and expanding areas of interest include the use of 3D bioprinting to engineer novel 3D tissue and organ-on-a-chip models for disc regeneration and low back pain studies. Performing mechanistic multi-scale approaches to develop novel research toolboxes for a better understanding of the clinical relevance of elastic fibres in the disc and other soft tissues is another research interest.