LIAM M. GROVER, PhD, is a professor of biomaterials science at the Univ. of Birmingham. He is a materials scientist by training and completed his PhD in Birmingham before moving to McGill Univ. (Montreal) to work as a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) skeletal health scholar. He returned to Birmingham in 2006 to establish a research group within the School of Chemical Engineering. He is an expert in the interactions that occur between materials and biological environments, investigating how materials influence biology and vice versa. He has developed innovative methods that allow the structuring of ceramic and polymeric materials to significantly change their mechanical and release properties. He has published widely on the development of new materials to replace the function of tissues (more than 200 papers) and has filed more than twenty patents to protect technologies that range from osteogenic cements to scar-reducing dressings. He has given well over 50 invited talks outside the U.K. Since starting his career, he has moved four technologies from concept through to clinical trial. He was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences for his work in understanding the interfaces between materials and biological systems.