Professor Ihtesham ur Rehman

As Head of Translational Research at the University of Central Lancashire and Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Translational Research, Ihtesham’s mission is to save “millions of lives” by improving healthcare through creating innovative technologies for early detection, diagnosis and monitoring of disease by bringing together university and clinical researchers. This is possible by promulgating a successful multidisciplinary approach, moving from concepts of technological solutions to patient care and involving scientists, engineers and clinicians.

As Professor of Biomaterials and Regenerative Medicine in the School, Ihtesham’s ultimate goal is to create an innovation hub for translational research to improve patient care. The hub will bring together researchers across various disciplines from the University, nationally and globally. They will aim to identify new applications of spectroscopy and other analytical techniques, such as loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) and to explore diagnostic technologies and medical devices for early interventions.

Ihtesham’s diverse research career has spanned over 35 years. He started his research career at the World-renowned Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Biomedical Materials at Queen Mary, University of London and remained there for over 22 years (1988 – 2011). He joined Kroto Research Institute at the University of Sheffield where he established biospectroscopy and dental materials (2011 – 2018). Before joining UCLan in 2023, he moved on to Lancaster University in 2019 and established a strong research group in Biospectroscopy and Bioengineering. From his spectroscopy work on micro-organisms at Lancaster University, he set up a spinout CCI Photonics^® to use spectroscopy as a diagnostic tool.

In his career, Ihtesham has developed and overseen over 20 undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in biomaterials and regenerative medicine, dental materials and materials science and engineering. In 2004, the MBA programme, which he devised and managed at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) was described as one of the most innovative programmes in the country.

Ihtesham has vast experience in Quality Assurance and Enhancement (QAE) including producing subject reviews and accreditation documents. He has more than 14 years of experience in developing and implementing a quality system accredited and registered for ISO9001 and ISO17025. In addition, he devised Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for Postgraduate Training and Assessment.

Ihtesham is a Founding Member and was Co-chairman of UPSIGN (UK Pakistan Science and Innovation Global Network) which was set up in 2017. It is an international group of over 250 professionals dedicated to tackling various social and economic challenges that are faced by people of Pakistani origin in Pakistan and the UK. He is also the Executive Director and founder of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) in Biomedical Materials, COMSATS, Pakistan doing innovative research in material sciences and life sciences.

Ihtesham has over 300 publications in the fields of spectroscopy of biological tissues, cancer research, early detection and diagnosis, synthesis and characterisation of biomaterials, human bone as well as dental materials (h-index of 62, in Google Scholar, with more than 18 thousand citations).