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
Project Pages:
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