Speakers
Dr. Tatiana Segura
Talk Title: "Microgel size in Microporous Annealed Particle Scaffolds (MAPS) impacts macrophage polarity"
Biography: Professor Tatiana Segura received her BS degree in Bioengineering from the University of California Berkeley and her doctorate in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University. Her graduate work in designing and understanding non-viral gene delivery from hydrogel scaffolds was supervised by Prof. Lonnie Shea. She pursued post-doctoral training at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne under the guidance of Prof. Jeffrey Hubbell, where her focus was self-assembled polymer systems for gene and drug delivery. Professor Segura's Laboratory studies the use of materials for minimally invasive in situ tissue repair. On this topic, she has published 113 peered reviewed publications to date. She has been recognized with the Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, the American Heart Association National Scientist Development Grant, and the CAREER award from National Science Foundation. She was Elected to the College of Fellows at the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineers (AIMBE) in 2017. She spent the first 11 years of her career at UCLA department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and has recently relocated to Duke University, where she holds appointments in Biomedical Engineering, Neurology and Dermatology.
Dr. Katie Young
Talk Title: "Racial Health Disparities: Learning through the Lens of a Cancer Researcher"
Biography: Dr. Katie Young is an Austin, Texas native who studied biomedical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin before pursuing a Biomedical Engineering PhD at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University before joining the Reinhart-King Lab at Vanderbilt.
She first became interested in teaching about racial health disparities after the murders of Bryonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd in the summer of 2020. Inspired by these tragic events and discussions with friends on justice, equity, diversity and inclusion, she decided to teach a class where students apply a racial equity lens to explore cancer biology and current health inequities before discussing solutions for closing the health gap. In the spring of 2021, she put together a curriculum for a three-workshop series for students, faculty, and staff at Georgia Tech.
In her research, she is interested in cancer cell mechanics, specifically in understanding how cell stiffness affects the various stages of the metastatic cascade. When not in lab, she volunteers with a Christian organization, Young Life, mentoring adolescents and young adults. She also loves biking, baking, books, and Broadway musicals!
Dr. Thomas Werfel
Talk Title: "Polymeric Drug Delivery Systems for Interval Delivery of Psychedelics"
Biography: Dr. Thomas Werfel is Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Joint Assistant Professor of BioMolecular Sciences, and Affiliate Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at The University of Mississippi (UM). Dr. Werfel received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University in 2017, after which he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. In 2018, he joined the Biomedical Engineering Program at the University of Mississippi and is an inaugural faculty member of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UM – founded in 2019. As a graduate student, Dr. Werfel was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) Fellowship. His tenure as a postdoctoral researcher was supported by the NIH F32 Postdoctoral Fellowship. His research has been published in cross-disciplinary journals from Biomaterials and Advanced Materials to PNAS and Cancer Research, and he was recently recognized as a Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigator in 2021. His research group at UM works at the interface of bioengineering, materials science, and molecular biology to engineer the medicines of the future.
Dr. Eden Tanner
Talk Title: "Bio-inspired Ionic Liquids for Drug Delivery"
Biography: Dr. Eden Tanner joined the University of Mississippi Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry on July 1st. Dr. Tanner received her Bachelor of Advanced Science from The University of New South Wales, Australia in 2012 and he Doctor of Philosophy in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom in 2016 under the direction of Prof. Richard G. Compton. She then served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University working with Prof. Samir Mitragotri in the School of Engineering and Applied Science before joining the faculty at UM. Her group will use a physical chemistry toolkit to solve biomedical and bioengineering problems, particularly using ionic liquids and nanomaterials.
Dr. John Martin
Talk Title: "'Healing-Responsive' Biomaterials for Engineering Tissue Regeneration"
Biography: Dr. John R. Martin is an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Martin completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Kentucky where he majored in Biosystems Engineering before obtaining a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt University investigating cell-degradable tissue engineering scaffolds. Following his doctoral work, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Chemical Engineering where he researched drug delivery systems for the regeneration of craniofacial bone tissue.
Dr. Martin leads the Bioresponsive Materials Lab at UC, exploring “smart” biomaterial systems that leverage precise cell-generated signals (including reactive oxygen species and enzymatic activity) to activate biomaterial functionality and guide tissue regeneration. This interdisciplinary research integrates polymer science and materials engineering alongside pharmacology and biology to build new systems for regenerating orthopedic injuries in the clinic.
Dr. Ramkumar Annamala
Talk Title: "Immunomodulatory Therapy for Bone Regeneration"
Biography: Dr. Ramkumar Annamala is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Kentucky. After receiving his Bachelors in Technology in Biotechnology from Bharathidasan University, India, Dr. Annamala went on to receive both his Masters of Science and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Wayne State University. At the University of Kentucky Dr. Annamalai’s lab broadly focuses on tissue regeneration and vascularization using biomaterials and biofabrication strategies. Strategies to engineer or modulate immune responses for tissue regeneration are of particular interest. His lab employs an array of biomaterial, mammalian cell culture techniques, and animal models to develop translatable strategies. Specific areas of interests include elucidating the role of immune cells in neotissue formation, developing injectable biomaterial systems and other biofabrication strategies, developing immunomodulatory strategies for guiding tissue regeneration, and developing bioresponsive drug-delivery vehicles.
Dr. Stacey Schutte
Talk Title: "Bilayered Scaffold Designed for Innervation"
Biography: Dr. Stacey Schutte is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Schutte received Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from Georgia Tech before pursuing a postdoctoral fellowship in gynecology and obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine. Before joining the faculty at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Schutte worked as a senior engineer for Cummins Engine and instructor and researcher of Gynecology and Obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine, and an assistant investigator at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Cincinnati, OH. Her research focuses on engineering of soft tissue including skin, elastin synthesis, mechanobiology, and effects of proteases on wound healing.
Dr. Nathaniel Huebsch
Talk Title: "Biomaterial platforms to study role of biomechanical stress in maturation and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy phenotypes in iPSC-derived heart muscle"
Biography: Professor Huebsch joined Washington University in St. Louis in January of 2018. Prior to this, he was a senior scientist in the Department of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley and a postdoctoral fellow at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease. Professor Huebsch's research focus is in basic and translational stem cell mechanobiology, with specific focus on hydrogels to control cell-mediated tissue repair, and 3-D iPSC-based heart-in-a-dish models to study the influence of mechanical loading and genetics on arrhythmia and contractility.
Dr. Alexandra Rutz
Talk Title: "3D Printed Conducting Polymers as Bioelectronic Scaffolds"
Biography: Professor Alexandra Rutz joined Washington University in St. Louis in March 2021. After earning a PhD in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University in 2016, she was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Whitaker International postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge (UK) in the Division of Electrical Engineering. Professor Rutz's research focuses on the engineering of electronic tissues using materials design and fabrication-based approaches. Her goal is to achieve robust biointerfaces and long-lived function in bioelectronics and other medical devices.
Dr. Richard D'Arcy
Talk Title: "Ultrahigh Drug-Loaded Micelles for the Treatment of a Triple-Negative Breast Cancer"
Biography: Dr. D’Arcy graduated from the University of Manchester (UoM) in 2011 with a M.Eng. in biomedical material science, undertaking a one‐year industrial placement at Biocompatibles International plc, where he worked on drug‐eluting embolization beads and stimuli‐responsive polymersomes. In 2015, he obtained his Ph.D. from UoM under the supervision of Prof. Nicola Tirelli, where he engineered novel oxidation‐responsive and self‐assembling polymers. From 2015, he was an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow at UoM studying the effect of antioxidant nanoparticles on cancer before moving to the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genova, Italy in 2017 as a collaborator/post-doc. In 2019 he was appointed Research Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt working in the Duvall lab and is now developing new drug delivery systems/gene therapies targeted towards osteoarthritis and bone destructive cancer metastasis. Outside of the lab, he attempts to learn languages, explore the outdoors and is unfortunately a keen Newcastle United fan.
Dr. Vince Venditto
Talk Title: "Antibiotics to heal a broken heart"
Biography: Dr. Vincent J. Venditto received training in organic synthesis and vaccine development. He obtained a BS in chemistry from Gettysburg College and then worked for two years at the NCI, NIH as a cancer research trainee before attending graduate school. He obtained a PhD in chemistry from Texas A&M University and worked on vaccine development as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at University of California, San Francisco. His expertise is in cardiovascular disease, liposomal drug/vaccine delivery - including COVID-19 vaccines, immunology, innovative teaching, and pharmaceutics
Dr. Christopher Nelson
Talk Title: “Expanding applications of in vivo genome engineering to rare disease and regenerative medicine”
Biography: Dr. Christopher Nelson joined the University of Arkansas Department of Biomedical Engineering as an assistant professor in June 2019. He completed his Bachelor’s Degree in Biological Engineering at the University of Arkansas, and his PhD from Vanderbilt University. Dr. Nelson is currently pursuing research at Duke University supported by The Hartwell Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship and the prestigious NIH Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00).
Dr. Nelson’s primary research interests are in developing new technologies for therapeutic genome engineering. Previously, he has developed biomaterial-based platforms for drug and gene delivery including a nanoparticle for systemic siRNA administration (ACS Nano 2013) and a multifunctional scaffold for local gene silencing for regenerative medicine (Advanced Materials 2014). More recently, he has applied a genome engineering approach to treat the genetic basis of Duchenne muscular dystrophy in vivo (Science 2016). Dr. Nelson now plans to apply gene and drug delivery to genome engineering to create precision molecular therapies, study regenerative medicine, and interrogate gene function and regulation.