MEDALLOY Doctoral Network

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Please see Applications for the link to the application portal and instructions.

Medalloy Doctoral Network

Recruiting 9 Researchers

MEDALLOY is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Industrial Doctoral Network which will develop advanced Nitinol alloys for medical device applications. MEDALLOY will provide world-class training for nine doctoral candidates (DCs) through an international consortium across six countries, which consists of four academic, two clinical and five industry members who together operate across the entire Medical Device Value Chain, including material production, manufacturing and delivering devices. MEDALLOY researchers will enable the next generation of Nitinol devices by optimising manufacturing processes, enhancing defect tolerance and predicting fatigue life and device performance.

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Our Objective

Nitinol is an advanced alloy that is widely used and of critical importance in modern medical devices such as stents, heart valves, and guidewires due to its excellent biocompatibility and unique superelasticity and shape memory behaviour. The deployment of Nitinol in these and other devices has revolutionized treatments for widespread conditions such as atherosclerosis and valvular heart disease, directly addressing Europe’s growing burden of cardiovascular disease.

Our research objectives are:

Develop NiTi-based alloys with superior functional performance and high cycle fatigue life.
Optimize and refine both conventional and additive manufacturing processes for Nitinol semi-finished and finished components.
Improve understanding of defect tolerance and improved prediction of fatigue life.
Create validated predictive modelling frameworks including advanced material models and simulation frameworks that accurately capture the non-linear, anisotropic behaviour of Nitinol materials and devices under complex loading.

Our training objectives are:

Provide core technical and research-related skills throughout all elements of the Medical Device Value Chain, i.e. (i) Materials, (ii) Manufacturing and (iii) Applications.
Deliver advanced technical and research-related skills training to DCs on advanced topics in all core elements of the Medical Device Value Chain through a comprehensive programme of network-wide events.
Deliver key transferable and interdisciplinary skills and competences to DCs through an extensive programme of network-wide events and local training, to enhance employability in diverse settings.
Promote strong international mobility of DCs through all DCs moving internationally for 18-month intersectoral secondments and across all five European countries hosting network-wide training events.

Our Consortium

The MEDALLOY consortium brings together academic, industrial, and clinical organisations with established expertise in Nitinol materials, medical device development, and biomechanics. It includes three degree-awarding institutions (University of Galway, Politecnico di Milano, and the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences) and our industrial partners Admedes, BioActiveMetals, Boston Scientific, CroiValve, and Ingpuls are involved across the Nitinol medical device supply chain from alloy production to finished devices. Our network is supported by partners who provide clinical, regulatory, ethical, and commercialisation expertise to support the research and training actions. The network is structured to support the MSCA Doctoral Network requirements, with joint supervision across sectors, formal progress-monitoring procedures, and coordinated training activities. Partners contribute laboratory infrastructure, industrial-scale manufacturing capabilities, simulation tools, and clinical facilities relevant to the individual doctoral projects, and participate in shared management, technical committees, and review processes.

Consortium members

Projects

Full details of the projects are on the Applications page

DC	Project	University	Industry Partner	Recruiting country
1	NiTi-based alloys for SE and SM biomedical applications			Czechia
2	Shape setting treatments for superelastic medical NiTi devices			Czechia
3	Material characterisation and test method development for Nitinol material interchangeability and sustainability			Ireland
4	Experimental and numerical investigation of defect crack propagation in Nitinol			Germany
5	Prediction of device performance and fatigue life for AM Nitinol devices			Ireland
6	Numerical and experimental fatigue assessment of Nitinol cardiovascular devices			Italy
7	Shape setting simulation of medical Nitinol devices			Ireland
8	Nitinol low cycle cyclic performance for guide wire applications			Germany
9	Validated in silico pipeline for modelling the deployment of a novel tricuspid device			Italy

Apply now for the 9 Doctoral Candidate positions

Coordinator

The Medalloy Doctoral Network is Coordinated by Dr William Ronan from the Institute for Health Discovery & Innovation and the School of Engineering at the University of Galway, Ireland.

The Institute for Health Discovery and Innovation at the University of Galway is an interdisciplinary, cross college, institute focused on supporting high quality research activity across the domains of health discovery and innovation research.

Dr Ronan is the Vice Dean for Graduate Studies at the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Galway and previously the training coordinator for the MSCA Innovative Training Network BioImplant

Dr Ronan’s research group focuses on materials for medical devices including superelastic Nickel-Titanium alloys, biodegradable polymers and other advanced materials. His group uses computational solid mechanics and multi-physics modelling to develop and understand the next generation of materials for medical devices.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions grant agreement No 101227596

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the
author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European
Research Executive Agency (REA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority
can be held responsible for them.