Professor Yos Morsi

Biography

Emeritus Professor Morsi obtained his MSc, PhD and DIC from Imperial College/University College London and carried out his initial academic training as a Research Fellow in UCL and as a lecturer in Loughborough University of Technology UK.

Yos Morsi's research is focused on experimental and numerical quantification of single and multiphase flows in complex environments. He is a recognised expert in the utilization of Laser diagnostics techniques such as LDA, PIV and Particle Dynamics Analyzer as well as Computational Fluid Dynamics to analyse fundamental and industrial research fluid flow and hemodynamics problems.

During his career, spanning 30 years, Professor Morsi has held both industry positions and a range of senior academic positions involving lecturing; research; research supervision; research leadership and industry collaboration.  He has also been a member of numerous senior academic committees and responsible for managing his own research group, as well as contributing to the management of his faculty.   Yos Morsi is currently Professor of Bio-Mechanical Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences (FEIS) at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne Australia.

In 2003 and in response to the strategic initiative by the Swinburne Vice Chancellor, Professor Morsi established the Tissue Engineering and Bio-Mechanics Laboratories in the Industrial Research Institute Swinburne (IRIS). These laboratories consisted of a bio-fluid mechanics section for modelling and manufacturing specially designed scaffolds for cell dynamic and in vitro conditioning, as well as a tissue culture laboratory, equipped for cell culture, characterisation, histomorphometric analysis of cells and the engineered cell/polymer constructs.

The biomechanics and tissue engineering group working in these laboratories is an interdisciplinary team with various expertise in hemodynamics, CAD modelling, scaffold design and cell culture. In the design and optimization of the scaffolds, various manufacturing techniques, such as fused deposition modelling and electro-spinning are used to construct biocompatible and biodegradable material constructs. The labs are also active in the bio-mechanics of engineered tissues, with particular emphasis on understanding the in-vitro and in-vivo remodelling processes from a functional bio-mechanical perspective. Moreover, CFD and Fluid-Structure Interactions (FIS) are constantly used to refine the design of scaffolds for various applications of soft and hard tissues including heart valves and various configurations of arteries.

Research conducted by Professor Morsi's group is ultimately aimed at the creation of living heart valves and arteries as replacement entities, rather than using the current option of artificial heart valves and stents. Thus far, a polyurethane tri-leaflet heart valve scaffold has been created and the design is constantly refined using an in vitro bioreactor to simulate natural heart valves. The group successfully manufactured the first Australian Tri-leaflet (aortic) sheep heart valve scaffold (based on CT scan) made from polyurethane. This work included the production of cellularized scaffold templates for defined flow conditioning in bioreactors. Human mesenchymal stem cells were also used for the creation of all the three layer of the heart valve leaflets.