Olga Panagiotopoulou

My research focuses on the mechanical, developmental and physiological determinants of the locomotor and masticatory systems in vertebrates from clinical, and basic science perspectives.

I received my BA at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in 2003, my MSc on Human Osteology and Palaeopathology from the University of Bradford, UK in 2006 and then I obtained my PhD at the University of York, UK in 2010, funded by Marie Curie and the Bakalas Institution. Following my PhD, I joined the Structure and Motion Laboratory at the Royal Veterinary College as a 3 year Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) Postdoctoral Fellow, where I worked on comparative locomotor mechanics of large mammals. In the last two years of my postdoctoral appointment, I received a EU Marie Curie Reintegration Fellowship on chewing mechanics, during which I rounded my training working closely with Professors Callum Ross (University of Chicago). On March 2013, I relocated to Australia to start my first academic appointment as a Lecturer in Anatomy at the School of Biomedical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland and in 2016 I received my tenure.

On February 2018 I relocated to Monash University, where I currently hold a Senior Lectureship in Anatomy and serve as the Head of the Moving Morphology and Functional Mechanics Laboratory.

Our laboratory focuses on two major programmes a) Jaw fracture repair and b) Functional Comparative Feeding Mechanics. Using a combination of in vivo experimental techniques, material testing, musculoskeletal simulations and mathematical models we study the function of the musculoskeletal system in healthy conditions and the effect of trauma and degenerative joint diseases on tissue function.