Rate My Professor Reece Oosterbeek

Reece Oosterbeek is an Associate Professor of Engineering Science in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial Fellow in Mechanical Engineering at Lincoln College. A native of New Zealand, he earned BE(Hons) and ME degrees in Chemical and Materials Engineering from the University of Auckland. He completed his PhD in Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge in 2020 as a member of Trinity College, with research on bioresorbable polymer-glass composites for medical implants funded by a Woolf Fisher Scholarship. After his doctorate, he served as a Research Associate in the Biomechanics Group at Imperial College London, investigating additively manufactured metal lattice materials for orthopaedic implants. He joined the University of Oxford in 2022 as a Departmental Lecturer, advancing to Associate Professor in 2023, and is affiliated with the Solid Mechanics and Materials Engineering Group.

Professor Oosterbeek's research focuses on developing advanced materials for load-bearing medical implants, leveraging mechanical metamaterials designed via additive manufacturing, such as laser powder bed fusion, combined with bioresorbable composites to control degradation and mechanical property evolution. His methodologies include micro-CT, static and fatigue testing, surface treatments, SEM, XRD, polymer processing, DSC/TGA, and degradation studies. Notable publications encompass 'Engineering of Bioresorbable Polymers for Tissue Engineering and Drug Delivery Applications' (2024), 'Mechanics and modeling of hierarchically porous metamaterials manufactured by foaming fused deposition modeling' (2026), 'The coupled effect of aspect ratio and strut micro-deformation mode on the mechanical properties of lattice structures' (2024), 'Shear yielding and crazing in dry and wet amorphous PLA at body temperature', and 'Maximising data from small scale testing on irradiated material for fusion power'. His work has garnered over 840 citations on Google Scholar, influencing fields like medical materials, mechanical metamaterials, resorbable implants, and additive manufacturing. In 2026, he was awarded the SCGC-FIRST grant by Oxford's MPLS Division for AI-integrated advanced materials testing in sustainability research. He delivers undergraduate tutorials across mechanical engineering topics in the Engineering Science syllabus.