Alicia Damen is a doctoral candidate (PhD) in the Orthopaedic Biomechanics group under the supervision of prof. dr. Keita Ito and dr. René van Donkelaar. Her project focuses on the tribological assessment of a bioengineered regenerative osteochondral implant as a treatment for focal cartilage defects. This research is part of the MimiCart project of InSciTe and the osteoarthritis moonshot of RegMed XB.

Alicia Damen studied the bachelor Biomedical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology where she received her BSc degree in 2015. In 2018, she obtained her MSc degree in Medical Engineering within the Orthopaedic Biomechanics group of prof. dr. Keita Ito from the Biomedical Engineering department at the same university. Her master thesis focused on the friction and wear behavior of a novel polymeric osteochondral implant for focal articular cartilage defects. As part of her MSc degree, she completed an internship at the Chemical and Materials Engineering department at the University of Auckland (Auckland, New Zealand). There she investigated the curling behavior of articular cartilage, under supervision of Dr. A. Thambyah. In 2018, she started as a PhD candidate in the Orthopaedic Biomechanics group where she will work on the development of a bioengineered regenerative osteochondral implant for focal cartilage defects. Her role in this project is to minimize the friction between this implant and the opposing cartilage in order to prevent excessive wear during articulation.