Dr Fiona Freeman of the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at University College Dublin (UCD) has been named Science Woman of the Year at the Business Post Women in STEM Awards 2026, for developing innovative treatments for childhood bone cancer.
Her group studies paediatric osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer that mostly affects teenagers and young adults. It combines 3D bioprinting, organ-on-chip models and targeted nanotherapeutics, and builds patient-specific tumour models to test treatments before clinical trials, which is valuable for rare cancers where recruiting patients is hard. The work also promotes non-animal research methods.
Freeman has secured more than €3.4 million in research funding, including a European Research Council Starting Grant, has held fellowships at MIT, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Johns Hopkins University, and was named one of MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 in 2023.
