Alumnus Mazin Sirry appointed as HOD Department of Biomedical Engineering at UMST Khartoum

Prof Mazin Sirry, alumnus of the Division of Biomedical Engineering, has been appointed as Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Medical Sciences and Technology in Khartoum, Sudan.

Prof Sirry joined our division in 2008 to undertake a MSc in Biomedical Engineering during which he undertook research in the biomechanics of tissue-engineering blood vessels for treatment of cardiovascular diseases in the Mechanobiology Lab. Following the completion of his Master's degree, he decided to further his academic education and commenced PhD studies. Prof Sirry's doctoral research focussed on the computational and experimental biomechanics of myocardial infarction (heart attacks) and therapy approaches based on injecting biomaterials in the injured heart muscle. Prof Sirry received a PhD scholarship from the South African Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) as part of a three-year flagship project. As part of his PhD project, He spent a six-months research visit in Prof Jun Liao's laboratory, at that time at the Mississippi State University. Subsequently, Prof Sirry undertook a two-year postdoctoral fellowship on cardiac disease biomechanics in our division. The fellowship was fiunded from the CHPC to further develop and retain African researchers who were supported through their flagship projects.

We congratulate Prof Sirry to his appointment as HOD at UMST and wish him best in this exciting and challenging position. We also look forward to working with him to establish collaborations between our institutions to strengthen the contribution of biomedical engineering to health in Africa.