Associate Professor Elena Juan Pardo is the Laboratory Head of the tissue engineering laboratory, Translational 3d Printing Laboratory for Advanced Tissue Engineering (T3mPLATE), at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research. A/Prof Juan Pardo also holds a Senior Lecturer position at The University of Western Australia (UWA). After starting her career as a materials engineer, working on fusion reactors, Elena decided to transfer her engineering skills to the medical world. With extensive experience in biomaterials and biofabrication, Elena has focussed her research on tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and in vitro modelling. Her current research involves the development of a pioneering 3D printing technology, known as melt electrowriting, which enables the production of highly controlled cellular scaffolds for tissue engineering and biomedical applications.

A/Prof Juan Pardo graduated as a Materials Engineer from the University of Navarra (San Sebastian, Spain) in 2001. She completed her doctoral work at the Max-Planck-Institute for Plasma Physics (Garching b. Munich, Germany) and received her PhD from the Technical University of Munich in 2004. Later, she joined the University of California, Berkeley as a Postdoctoral Fellow to start building up her research capacity in bioengineering. From 2008-2012 A/Prof Juan Pardo established and led the Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials Group at the Centre of Studies and Technical Research of Gipuzkoa (Spain) and served as Director of the Master in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Navarra (Spain). In 2013 she joined the Centre in Regenerative Medicine at the Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation of the Queensland University of Technology to further expand her interdisciplinary research skills in the areas of biomaterials, tissue engineering and biofabrication. She served as Deputy Director of the Centre for three years prior to joining the Perkins. She has received multiple prestigious awards, including the Spanish National Prize in Materials Engineering, the Otto-Hahn-Medal of the Max-Planck Society and the Stem Cells Young Investigator Award.