Professor Andrea O’Connor, BE(Hons), PhD, FIChemE is the Shanahan Chair in Frontier Medical Solutions and a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Melbourne where she leads the Tissue Engineering Group. She was a Fulbright Scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1995-96.

Her research is focussed on design, synthesis and fabrication of biomaterials, porous materials and antimicrobial nanomaterials. She is particularly interested in strategies for scale-up of tissue engineering including vascularisation, and design of antimicrobial materials for medical implants. She has published over 90 journal articles, co-authored the chapter on Tissue Engineering for the major reference work ‘Plastic Surgery’ edited by Neligan and Gurtner, lectured on tissue engineering and biofabrication at the Bayreuth International Summer School, Germany, and was a finalist in the 2017 Graeme Clark Institute HealthTech Innovation Challenge.