Jason W. Nichol - Postdoctoral Fellow, Tissue Engineering group leader

Meeting Summary Page - Please complete after each subgroup meeting.

Education/Experience:

University of Arizona

1998 BS - Aerospace Engineering w/Biomedical Option (ask me sometime what that means)

2000 MS - Mechanical Engineering - Solid Mechanics

University of Pennsylvania

2005 PhD - Bioengineering - Vascular Tissue Engineering and Remodeling

MIT

2006-8 - Postdoctoral Fellow w/Lisa Freed in the Langer Lab. Still hold Affiliate appointment in Freed/Langer labs

Research Interests:

Tissue engineering - mostly cardiac and cardiovascular but I'm open to trying new systems

Scaffold/biomaterial development - methods for creating scaffolds with biomimetic mechanical properties and microarchitecture

Stem cell differentiation - techniques for differentiating stem cells based on 3D scaffold mechanical properties and mechanical stimulation

Bioreactor development - creating in vitro systems that recapitulate the in vivo mechanical environment

Experience & Skills:

Mechanical testing - Extensive experience testing biological soft tissues and polymers using various Instron and Bose ELF 3200 machines

* - Langerlab Instron manager, and also have access to the Freed lab ELF3200 all in E25

Perfusion bioreactors - designing, operating and fabricating perfusion systems for in vitro tissue engineering, esp large blood vessels

Histology - Extensive experience in entire paraffin embedding/sectioning/staining process, immunohistology, fluorescent & confocal imaging etc.

* - Access to and experience using Langer/Freed paraffin embedding, microtome equipment in E25

Protein zymography - experienced in harvesting protein, running zymograms for MMP-2/9 activity, some experience w/western blots

RNA isolation - experienced in RNA harvest using homogenization, using Nanodrop and RT-PCR, less experience w/real time PCR

Finite element anaylsis - some experience in finite element programs Abaqus and Comsol (tho it's been a while)

Drafting/3D drawing - decently proficient w/ProEngineer, very experienced w/AutoCad (older versions but they aren't too different)

Programming - not really my cup of tea, but I am fluent in Fortran and basic HTML if for some strange reason you need help w/those

Ice skating - played hockey all through childhood, but not since. Can still lace them up and take a few laps upright

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