Michelle Teplensky, PhD

Assistant Professor (BME, MSE)

Office ERB 701A
Email mtep@bu.edu
Phone 617-358-2699
Website Teplensky Lab

In the News

Nanomaterials and vaccine research earns CMBE Rising Star Award
November 7, 2025
Michelle Teplensky was awarded the Biomedical Engineering Society’s 2026 Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Rising Star Award. [ More ]
Designing a Vaccine That Helps the Most Vulnerable
December 3, 2024
"The goal is to create a more potent and broad response with a single injection." [ More ]

Publications

View a complete list of publications by citation.

Research Areas

Research in the Teplensky Lab focuses on engineering nanotechnology to control immunological cell connectivity, processing, and communication by design. In doing so, we elucidate fundamentals about cellular events and leverage this knowledge to develop improved therapeutics and vaccines that can impact the treatment of cancer and infectious disease. Our work is highly interdisciplinary, and bridges the fields of engineering, chemistry, nanotechnology, immunology, and biomaterials. By sitting at this interface, we are able to develop and incorporate synthetic nanoscale advances to control immunological activity and elucidate design rules that have widespread impacts on therapeutic development.

Honors and Awards

2024 Beckman Young Investigator Award
2023 Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award
2023 ACS-BU pilot Award
2023 American Institute of Chemical Engineers 35 Under 35: Bioengineering Category
2021 International Institute for Nanotechnology Outstanding Researcher Award
2021 University of Washington Dept. of Chemical Engineering Distinguished Young Scholars Seminar Best Speaker Award
2020 Crain’s Chicago Notable Woman In STEM
2019 NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship
2018 International Institute For Nanotechnology Postdoctoral Fellowship
2018 STEM For Britain Chemistry – Silver Medal
2014 Gates Cambridge Scholar

Additional Affiliations

Division of Materials Science & Engineering

Departments or Divisions: Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering

Affiliations: Primary & Affiliated Faculty, Synthetic Biology, Tissue Engineering & Mechanobiology

View all profiles