TRB Faculty

TRB mentors come from diverse backgrounds and include 34 BU / BUSM program faculty members: 13 from biomedical engineering including one joint appointments (BME/CH), four from Chemistry, six from Mechanical Engineering, one from Dermatology, one from Biochemistry, one from Pathology, and one from Ophthalmology. In response to trainee research interests, seven mentors from outside BU / BUSM have also joined the program: one from Schepens Eye Research Institute, three from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and three from Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital.

The TRB program co-directors are Dr. Mark Grinstaff and Dr. Arturo Vegas. Dr. Grinstaff is Distinguished Professor of Translational Research, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Materials Science and Engineering, and Medicine at BU and BUSM. Dr. Vegas holds appointments in the Chemistry and BME departments and shares overall responsibility for managing all aspects of the training program with Dr. Grinstaff, including its implementation, monitoring, and ongoing development. Dr. Vegas holds appointments in the Chemistry and BME departments and shares overall responsibility for managing all aspects of the training program with Dr. Grinstaff, including its implementation, monitoring, and ongoing development.

TRB Faculty and Research Areas:

Rhoda Alani, MD, Professor of Dermatology: Development and use of engineered model systems for cancer development and progression; cell-scaffold clusters; biomakers; drug delivery for treatment of melanoma.

Michael Albro, PhD, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering: Role of mechanical loading and extracellular matrix interactions on the regulation of signaling molecules in the extracellular environment of biological tissues; progression and treatment of osteoarthritis; cartilage tissue engineering.

Keith Brown, PhD, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering: Top-down patterning and bottom-up assembly; mesoscale soft materials; scanning probe techniques; soft matter-electric field interactions.

Elliot Chaikof, MD, PhD, Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: Regenerative medicine; medical devices; treatment of vascular diseases.

Christopher Chen, MD, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering: Application of microfabrication and nanotechnology to cell and tissue engineering; regenerative medicine; cardiovascular tissue engineering.

Yolonda Colson, MD, PhD, Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital: NIR intra-operative sentinel lymph node imaging in lung cancer patients; application of drug delivery devices to prevention of recurrence after resection.

Allison Dennis, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering: Nanobiotechnology; fluorescent biosensing; diagnostic devices; fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET); quantum dot chemistry; fluorescence microscopy; single molecule sensing/imaging.

Louis Gerstenfeld MD, PhD, Professor of Biochemistry and Orthopaedic Surgery: Functional role of TNF-alpha cytokines during bone repair; fracture healing and distraction osteogenesis; bone morphogenetic protein signaling in fracture healing and bone regeneration; relationships of genetic factors that regulate bone mineral density to bone healing.

Lee Goldstein, MD, PhD, Associate Professor of Pathology, Biomedical Engineering, Neurology, Ophthalmology, and Psychiatry:  Researching the role of abnormal protein aggregation in chronic degenerative disorders of aging; diagnostic technology for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease; delivery of therapeutics to the brain.

Mark Grinstaff, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Materials Science and Engineering, Medicine & TRB Co-Director:  Designing, synthesizing, and characterizing novel dendrimers, termed “biodendrimers,” for tissue engineering and biotechnological applications; new polyglycerols for drug delivery; superhydrophobic meshes for drug delivery; biolubricants for cartilage repair.

Xue Han, PhD, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering: Discovering design principles for novel neuromodulation therapies; drug and stem cell delivery to the brain; develop and apply a variety of genetic, molecular, pharmacological, optical, and electrical tools to correct neural circuits that go awry within the brain; optogenetics.

Catherine Klapperich, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering: Nanomechanics of hydrated biomaterials implants for tissue engineering scaffold materials, and bio-micro electromechanical systems; molecular interactions of cells and inorganic materials to develop concepts for cell/synthetic hybrid devices; microfluidic device for diagnostics.

Elise Morgan, PhD, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering:  Interactions between mechanical forces and tissue microstructure in the maintenance, regeneration, and degradation of skeletal tissues; understanding the biological basis of how mechanical forces aid in injury treatment/prevention; scaffold designs for improved repair.

John Ngo, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering:  Protein and biomolecular engineering, directed evolution, fluorescence microscopy, electron microscopy, cell biology, chemical biology, molecular self-assembly, diagnostics; bionanotechnology.

Hadi Nia, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering:  Tumor microenvironments; physical sciences of cancer; intravital imaging and animal models of cancer; mechanobiology and biomechanics.

Timothy O’Shea, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering:  Glia engineering, biomaterials, neural engineering, spinal cord injury, stroke, glial neurobiology, regenerative medicine, cell transplantation.

Harald C. Ott, MD, Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital: Organ regeneration, tissue engineered organs, whole organ extracellular matrix (ECM) scaffolds, viable and functional hearts, lungs, kidneys.

Erica Pratt, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering (starting January 2022): Biomaterials, liquid biopsy assays, microfluidics, cancer biology.

Bjoern Reinhard, PhD, Professor of Chemistry: Development of new optical materials and their application to interrogate fundamental life processes and to detect viral and bacterial pathogens; nucleic acid – nanoparticle conjugates for intracellular delivery.

Magali Saint-Geniez, PhD, Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School / Schepens Eye Research Institute: Translational technologies for the characterization and treatment of retinal diseases such as aged-related macular degeneration; stem cell and material technology.

Scott Schaus, PhD, Associate Professor of Chemistry:  Molecular events of cell cycle regulation, chemical synthesis; cell proliferation and intracellular signaling in 3D scaffolds; stem cell proliferation on polymer substrates.

Michael Smith, PhD, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering: Mechanotransduction via the extracellular matrix; fibronectin; engineered cell culture platforms for regulating and measuring cell behavior in vitro.

Brian D. Snyder, MD, PhD. Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: Basic and applied research in musculoskeletal biomechanics, cellular processes, and gene expression; new CT imaging technologies; and biomaterial scaffolds for bone and cartilage repair.

Bela Suki, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering:  Mechanical properties of tissues and the ensemble behavior of complex biological processes; identifying the microscopic origins of the macroscopic properties of tissue; development of nonlinear models of respiratory mechanics which can help understand the underlying physiology; pulmonary drug delivery.

Joe Tien, PhD, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering:  Tissue engineering; self-assembly and self-organization; programmable cellular environments; microarrays; hydrogel and collagen models of vasular systems.

Mehmet Toner, PhD, Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital: Tissue engineering and artificial organs; low-temperature biology and biostabilization; and microsystems bioengineering in clinical medicine and biology.

Vickery Trinkaus-Randall, PhD, Professor of Ophthalmology and Biochemistry:  Tissue-engineered cornea; ECM biology; growth factors; corneal keratocyte biology; matrix biology; and cellular interactions with aligned collagen matrices; preparation and evaluation of artificial corneas.

Arturo Vegas, PhD, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Biomedical Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering:  Disease-focused research with an emphasis on cancer and diabetes; chemical approaches for developing novel targeting strategies for drug delivery; immunomodulation; new materials-based drug carriers.

Aristidis Veves, DSc, MD, Rongxiang Xu, MD Professor of Surgery in the Field of Regenerative Therapeutics, Harvard Medical School, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: Myocardial and vascular remodeling; role of macrophages in impaired wound healing; vascular function; new wound-healing products; clinical evaluation of FDA-approved medications on cardiovascular function.

Alice White, PhD, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering, and Physics: Nanofabrication, 3D printing; cardiovascular tissue engineering.

Joyce Wong, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering:  Understanding tissue morphogenesis via the determination of quantitative relationships at the interface between biomaterial substrates and the cell at the molecular, cellular and multicellular levels; developing new biomaterials for tissue engineering and drug delivery.

Muhammad Zaman, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering: Comprehensive and quantitative approaches to develop a multiscale understanding of cell-matrix interactions for fundamental biological and applied clinical research; in vitro and ex vivo tumor models; models of drug delivery and tumor response.

Xin Zhang, PhD Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering: Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS); metamaterials, photonics; nanomanufacturing; Sensors.

Katherine Yanhang Zhang, PhD, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering.  Cardiovascular mechanics multi-scale mechanics of extracellular matrix; mechanobiological constitutive modeling of biological tissue; micro- and nano-mechanics of thin film and thin polymer film coatings; soft tissue biomechanics constitutive modeling of biological materials.