'Fresh perspectives, innovative ideas and relentless energy'

09 September 2025

Health and medicine, Auckland Bioengineering Institute, Graduation, Staff news

Five years ago, Kiara Miller, on the verge of embarking on a PhD at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute (ABI), spent four months as an intern in Uganda installing and fixing donated medical equipment for hospitals.

Shocked by seeing first hand the problem of 'medical equipment graveyards', Miller and two colleagues spent their spare time in the final month of their internship designing a training app to help local healthcare workers identify, use and maintain this donated hospital technology.

The app won an international engineering award, and the experience changed Miller's life and reinforced her study path.

"I have always been passionate about equitable healthcare and that commitment has stayed with me ever since and continues to guide how I approach medical technologies and their real-world applications today.

"ABI is a very resourceful place; you are constantly surrounded by people tackling real-world health problems from different angles, including engineering, physiology, clinical practice and data science."

This month, Miller will be one of 11 students graduating from the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, including four in the gastrointestinal research team she's a part of, under Professor Leo Cheng.

Miller's PhD research involves work to develop less invasive, more accurate ways to diagnose swallowing and speech disorders.

Of the other three graduating gastrointestinal team members, one looked at ways nerve stimulation might help someone's gut work better, another developed an endoscopic (non-surgical) way to repair faulty electrical patterns in the gut, and the third investigated more efficient techniques for pacing the stomach - researchers want to be able to pace the gut in the same way a pacemaker regulates the heart.

Sri Lankan-born Chaveeka Weerakoon did her bachelors in software engineering and was planning to continue in the same field for postgraduate work, when she heard about a bioengineering project at the University of Auckland.

"That's when everything changed. I realised how exciting medical-based research could be. Exploring new ideas and working on something that could turn into a real treatment was incredibly rewarding.

"I ended up focusing on the electrical activity in the gastrointestinal system, analysing signals and trying to predict what would happen next, and that's when I knew I didn't want to stop.

"It's what convinced me to continue into a PhD."

Ashton Matthee was born in South Africa but grew up in Auckland. He says in his final year at school he couldn't decide what to study.

"I really enjoyed biology and human physiology, but I also wanted to do something that was hands-on. Biomedical engineering seemed to be the best compromise in having a course that taught hands-on skills while also having physiology courses."

The opportunity for a PhD which was largely 'translational' - research which bridges the gap between fundamental discoveries and practical applications, translating knowledge from the lab into real-world health benefits for human health and society - was what encouraged him to move to postgraduate study.

Omkar Athavale says being part of a focussed team at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute gave him the opportunity to work closely with other researchers - students and academics - sharing everything from technological expertise and research methods to international networks and hiking experiences.

"I was supported by my supervisors and lab to explore creative new ideas beyond the original scope of my PhD. This academic freedom was very fulfilling. Through this work I visited collaborators in Melbourne and conducted experiments that pushed the boundaries of our knowledge. I was also able to work with materials scientists to test their latest technology and bring it into pre-clinical studies in rats."

Next stop: Europe. In October Athavale will be moving to Belgium to work as a postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven, a global top-50 research university with a 600-year-old history.

"We are learning more about how the enteric nervous system - the little brain in the gut - has a role not only in controlling digestion, but in our overall health. My PhD involved using bioelectrical interventions that act through the enteric nervous system.

"In Leuven, I will use my engineering skills to develop cutting-edge measurement and analysis tools for neuroscience research on the frontier of our understanding."

Ashton Matthee is already overseas, taking the skills he learnt in the gastrointestinal field into a project at the Heart Research Institute in Sydney, where he is part of a team culturing so-called 'mini hearts' that can be used for a variety of purposes, from tissue regeneration using 3D bioprinters, to in-vitro testing of drugs.

Professor Leo Cheng leads the ABI's gastrointestinal motility and electrophysiology team. He says postgraduate students like the ones whose graduations are being celebrated this month "are critical for advancing our understanding and research in developing new therapies and diagnostic techniques for gut health disorders.

"Their fresh perspectives, innovative ideas, and relentless energy fuel both our experimental and simulation work."

And for the students?

"Studying at the ABI provides them with specialised expertise and transferable skills valuable both for and beyond academia," Cheng says.

"Our students develop a broad range of skills including problem solving, experimental design, computational simulations, data analysis/visualisation and project management."

But perhaps the most critical skill they develop, Cheng says, is "effective communication".

"We encourage students to attend international conferences and help them to network with our research collaborators."

Kiara Miller agrees. The best parts of postgraduate study were "the opportunities to present at conferences and to collaborate with both clinicians and engineers", she says.

"It really showed me how research can move from theory to application. I also loved those moments when an experiment or analysis finally worked after weeks of troubleshooting."

Media contact

Nikki Mandow | media adviser M: 021 174 3142 E: [email protected]

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