Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, Ph.D. is a University Professor, the highest academic rank at Columbia University and the first ever engineer at Columbia to receive this distinction. The focus of her lab is on engineering functional human tissues for use in regenerative medicine and in patient-specific “organs-on-a-chip” for studies of human pathophysiology. She is well published and highly cited (425 journal articles, h=131), and has had over 150 trainees. Her lab has launched four biotech companies. She is serving on the Council of the NIBIB, the HHMI Scientific Review Board, and on numerous editorial and scientific advisory boards. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, received the Clemson Award of the Biomaterials Society, Pritzker Award of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Shu Chien Award of the AIChE, Pierre Galletti award of the AIMBE, and was elected Fellow of several professional societies. She was decorated by the Order of Karadjordje Star - Serbia’s highest honor, and elected to the Academia Europaea, Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Inventors, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the International Academy for Medical and Biological Engineering.

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David Kaplan, Ph.D. holds an Endowed Chair, the Stern Family Professor of Engineering, at Tufts University. He is Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and also holds faculty appointments in the School of Medicine, the School of Dental Medicine, Department of Chemistry and Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. His research focus is on biopolymer engineering towards understanding the structure-function relationships in the context of protein self-assembly, biomaterials engineering, functional tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. He has published over 600 peer- reviewed papers and edited eight books. He serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals and is Editor- in-Chief for the ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering. He has received numerous awards for teaching and research, is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, and received the Columbus Discovery Medal and Society for Biomaterials Clemson Award for contributions to the literature. A highly regarded scientist, an experienced PI of numerous projects and a serial entrepreneur, Dr. Kaplan brings to the Center exceptional expertise and skills. 

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Clark Hung, Ph.D. pursues multidisciplinary research using state-of-the-art biological and engineering tools to perform studies to investigate physical effects (e.g., cell deformation, fluid flow effects, osmotic pressure) on cells and tissues and the incorporation of these forces in strategies to develop functional cartilage substitutes. An understanding of the effects of physical forces on cells is important in the development of effective tissue replacements that mimic or restore normal tissue structure-function in orthopaedic and other load-bearing tissues of the body. Such studies may lead to strategies aimed at alleviating the most prevalent and chronic problems afflicting the musculoskeletal system such as arthritis and problems related to sports and occupational injuries.  His research has been funded by agencies including the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, and The Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation. His work has been published in 166 full-length publications and 15 book chapters. 

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Barry Fine, M.D., Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in Cardiology at Columbia University Medical Center, College of Physicians and Surgeons and attending cardiologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital. As a physician scientist Dr. Fine’s lab focuses stem cells and engineered human cardiac microtissues to model cardiac disease and develop novel translational therapies. The goal of his research is to leverage advances in biomedical engineering and genetic manipulation to improve modeling cardiac diseases. His current laboratory focuses on utilizing human cardiomyocytes derived from induced pluripotent stem cells to three aspects of cardiac biology and disease: 1) understanding metabolic determinants of human cardiomyocyte survival and contractility utilizing engineered human tissues, 2) modeling congenital heart disease using programmed differentiation of stem cells to cardiomyocytes and CRISPR to mimic inherited mutations found in a specific disease called heterotaxy and 3) identifying determinants and biomarkers of graft failure after heart transplant using exosome proteomics and machine learning. 

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Brian Timko, Ph.D. graduated from Lehigh University with B.S. degrees in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in Chemistry. He completed his graduate studies in the laboratory of Professor Charles Lieber at Harvard, where he studied semiconductor nanowires and how they could be stably interfaced with living cells and tissue. He completed postdoctoral studies with Professor Robert Langer at MIT and Professor Daniel Kohane at Boston Children's Hospital. During that time, Timko studied nanocomposite materials for cardiac tissue engineering and remotely-triggered drug delivery, and subsequently, he was an instructor in anaesthesiology at Boston Children's Hospital. In 2016, he joined Tufts School of Engineering as an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Brian Timko's research interests lie at the intersection of materials science, chemistry, and biology, with a major focus on nanotechnology and nanoscale interfaces between solid-state and biological systems.

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Jinho Kim, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology. He graduated from Columbia University and has completed his postdoctoral training with Dr Vunjak-Novakovic. His research focuses on repairing diseased or damaged lung tissue utilizing an integrated multi-disciplinary approach, combining biomechanics, tissue engineering, bioimaging, and computer simulation. Dr. Kim’s team has created new tissue engineering modalities to accelerate the recovery of damaged lung tissue by allowing targeted delivery of therapeutic agents, stem cells, or biomaterials into local pathological sites of the lungs. He has been highly productive and has obtained numerous awards and grants, including the NSF CAREER award and the American Thoracic Society innovation grant.

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Dr. Nisha Iyer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University. Her research interests are at the intersection of developmental biology and regenerative medicine, using stem cells to understand and advance neural repair. She received her BS from Johns Hopkins University and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis in Biomedical Engineering. As an NIH-NINDS F31 Predoctoral Fellow working with Dr. Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert, she used CRISPR gene-editing in mouse stem cells to generate spinal locomotor interneurons for in vitro modeling and transplantation. Dr. Iyer conducted her postdoctoral research with Randolph Ashton at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin--Madison, where she was a Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center and NIH-NINDS F32 Postdoctoral Fellow. Her lab now focuses on how regional specificity impacts development, degeneration, and regeneration in the central nervous system and beyond, developing new stem cell tools and strategies to direct neurodegenerative and cell therapy research.

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Juan S. Gnecco, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University and a Visiting Scientist at the Center for Gynepathology Research (CGR) at MIT. His research lies at the interface of tissue engineering and reproductive biology to understand the immune-endocrine mechanisms driving both reproductive physiology and disease pathogenesis. His lab focuses on implementing engineering approaches and tools to uncover how inflammatory processes are regulated in the human female reproductive tract. He has been awarded three rounds of funding from Gates Foundation (2018-present) for his work building phenotypic screening models of the female reproductive tract. He has been selected as a Rising Star in Engineering and Health by Columbia University (2020).

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