Sakis Mantalaris

Professor Athanasios (Sakis) Mantalaris is the newest member of the NIBRT Principal Investigator (PI) team. Sakis has joined NIBRT as a joint appointee with Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where he holds the Don Panoz Chair of Pharmaceutical Biology at the School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences.  

Sakis will conduct his research at both NIBRT’s world-leading manufacturing research institute and at Trinity’s Translational Medicine Institute (TTMI) on the St James’s Hospital campus. His research will focus on the development and manufacture of cell therapies, with a strong emphasis on metabolomics, and the eventual translation of these therapies towards the clinical research setting. 

Prior to joining TCD and NIBRT, Sakis was Professor in the W.H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech & Emory since August 2018 before which he held the position of Professor of BioSystems Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London. 

Since graduating from the University of Rochester with his PhD in Chemical Engineering in 2000, Sakis has published over 200 papers, 30 book chapters, and co-edited a book, as well as having developed several patents and formed spin out companies earning him the recognition of an exceptional international researcher in his field. Sakis has competed at the highest levels in obtaining international competitive research securing some $40M for over 50 projects, from funding agencies in the UK, EU and US, as well as from industry and charities. He has graduated 45 PhDs, many of whom are themselves in academia. Sakis has received several awards including the Junior Moulton Award for best paper by the Institute of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) in 2004. In 2012, he was elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering, in 2013 he received an ERC Advanced Investigator Award and achieved the Donald Prize (2015) awarded by the UK Institute of Chemical Engineering for his work on bioprocessing. 

Sakis’ expertise in modelling biological systems and bioprocesses, specifically in mammalian cell culture systems, stem cell bioprocessing, and tissue engineering, aligns with NIBRT’s and TCD’s research goals of establishing Ireland as a preferred location for the manufacture of advanced therapies.