May 2022 Researcher Profile: Dr Brooke Farrugia

Dr Brooke Farrugia has a multifaceted research background with an overarching theme of investigating the response to biomaterials and how they interact with various biological environments, with research strengths in biomaterials development and characterisation, biochemistry, cellular biology, and glycobiology. Specifically, her research activities and interests lie in the fields of wound healing and tissue regeneration, the molecular mechanisms behind their occurrence, and the development of new therapeutics.

Dr Farrugia was awarded her PhD in 2010 from UNSW Sydney. She went on to carry out a post-doctoral position within the Institute of Health and Biomedical Engineering at Queensland University of Technology, where she was a member of the Tissue Repair and Regeneration group, developing scaffolds for in vitro skin models. In 2013 she returned to the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering at UNSW where her research focused on the response to implanted materials and developing biomimetic materials for the delivery of growth factors. In January 2019 Dr Farrugia joined the Department of Biomedical Engineering at The University of Melbourne continuing her research to develop new biomimetic material technologies for tissue regeneration applications, as well as exploring the interaction between extracellular matrix molecules that modulate tissue turnover.

Dr Farrugia is the current President of the Australasian Wound & Tissue Repair Society and the Secretary of the Matrix Biology Society of Australia and New Zealand. Her work on extracellular matrix materials, specifically proteoglycans and glycosaminoglycans is internationally renowned, receiving invitations to speak at the International Proteoglycan and Gordon Research Conference for Proteoglycans meetings.