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Benyamin has been working as a post-doctoral research associate at UCL Cardiovascular Engineering Laboratories since 2014, having initially joined the group as a postgraduate student in 2009.
His research activities include characterisation of biomaterials, and design, manufacture and assessment of cardiovascular prostheses, aiming to develop new strategies to improve the current heart valve replacement therapies.
He graduated as a biomedical engineer and further studied nanotechnology and regenerative medicine at UCL. Interested in the field of cardiovascular engineering and biomaterials, he started his first research project on the development of a novel semi-stented polymeric heart valve.
In pursuit of making the ‘ideal’ prosthetic heart valve, he completed his PhD collaborating with a multidisciplinary team of clinicians and scientists to build a new transcatheter heart valve, the TRISKELE, which has polymer leaflets and is robotically manufactured, offering the possibility of hemodynamically superior, cheaper and more durable valves when tested against market leaders. In 2016, he was awarded The YOUNG INVESTIGATOR AWARD from the British Heart Valve Society for his research ‘TRISKELE: expanding the horizons of transcatheter aortic valve replacement’. His team has also won the Medtec UK Start-up Academy Award, and the Medtec Europe Highly Commended Award in 2015.
During his post-doctoral research, Benyamin has been working with renowned physicians and cardiovascular scientists at UCL Institute of Cardiovascular Science, to develop a novel bioprosthetic heart valve which resists calcification, based on a new source of material: an alfa-gal free porcine pericardial xenograft.
Benyamin is currently running a co-development translational project in collaboration with major biomedical corporation to improve the safety and efficacy of a novel aortic valve suitable for TAVI.
He has published in serval high impact factor journals and International Conferences, filed two international patents and a design right, and wrote chapters in two scientific encyclopaedias.
