Biophysical Regulation of Cell Fate Transitions 

Timothy Downing, Ph.D.

Tim Downing has been on the faculty at UC Irvine since 2016 and holds a primary appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics. Tim received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 2008 from Northwestern University and Ph.D. in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley in 2013 under the mentorship of Dr. Song Li. As a Ford Foundation and UNCF/Merck Fellow, Tim completed his postdoctoral training in stem cell epigenomics with Dr. Alexander Meissner at Harvard University and the Broad Institute (Cambridge, Massachusetts). The Downing Lab focuses on understanding gene regulation during tissue development, regeneration, and disease progression. Building on this information, the lab also aims to develop molecular tools and biomaterials to synthetically regulate the epigenome for better control over cell fate and behavior.

Engineering Cancer Cell States 

Stephanie Fraley, Ph.D.

Dr. Stephanie I. Fraley is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego. She earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 2006 from The University of Tennessee, Chattanooga and her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in 2011 from The Johns Hopkins University. She has contributed fundamental knowledge in the fields of 3D cell migration and molecular detection technology, for which she received a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface and was named a SAGE Bionetworks Scholar, Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow, Biomedical Engineering Society Rising Star in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering, Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigator, NSF CAREER awardee, American Cancer Society Research Scholar, and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering fellow.

A primary focus of the Fraley lab is to develop a multi-scale, systems-level understanding of the mechanisms that orchestrate collective cell migration behaviors. These behaviors are the driving forces for normal tissue form and function as well as diseased states such as cancer. The Fraley lab is particularly interested in the confluence of cell-extracellular matrix interactions and cell-cell interactions and takes a multidisciplinary and multi-scale approach to quantify, perturb, and characterize these processes to understand the mechanisms of emergent multicellular phenomena. The lab develops and employs a variety of multidisciplinary techniques involving quantitative microscopy, cell biology, matrix biology, biophysics, biomaterials, biomechanics, and bioinformatics.  

Enhancing Bioelectronics with Feedback Control and Machine Learning for Adaptive Treatment strategies

Marcella Gomez, Ph.D.

Marcella M. Gomez is an associate professor at UC Santa Cruz in the department of Applied Mathematics and Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Baskin Engineering. She received her PhD from Caltech in 2015 and a B.S. from UC Berkeley in 2009; both degrees in Mechanical Engineering. Her research interests are in the broad field of bio-control. Her work focuses on modeling and control of complex biological systems using a variety of approaches leveraging both mechanistic models and data-driven methods. She is also a proud Chicana, first-generation Mexican-American from Riverside, CA. 

Engineered Living Materials: Making Biology Work for Engineering 

Christopher J. Hernandez, Ph.D.

Dr. Hernandez is a Professor in the Departments of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. Previously Dr. Hernandez served as Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University and Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Hernandez is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). He is the 2018 recipient of the Fuller Albright Award for Scientific Excellence from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. In 2022 he was named to the inaugural class of BRITE Fellows by the National Science Foundation. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Orthopaedic Research Society and the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. In 2021 he was awarded “Educator of the Year” by the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers. His laboratory’s research focuses on the effects of the microbiome on the musculoskeletal system and orthopaedic surgery, the biomechanics and mechanobiology of bacteria and engineered living materials.

Engineered Living Materials: Making Biology Work for Engineering 

Dongjin Lee, Ph.D.

Dongjin R. Lee, PhD, is a Science Officer in Therapeutics and Development group at the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). He has expertise in stem cell therapy discovery, development, and translation in neurology spaces. 

Tissue Engineering the Bruch's Membrane, the Basement Membrane of the Retina

Ronke Olabisi, Ph.D.

Ronke Olabisi is an Associate Professor and joined the UC Irvine Biomedical Engineering department in 2020 and is an affiliate faculty of the UC Irvine Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center. Prof. Olabisi came from Rutgers University where she was an assistant professor in Biomedical Engineering with an affiliation with the Institute of Advanced Materials, Devices, and Nanotechnology. The focus of her lab is tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. By modifying synthetic materials with the natural, her lab develops cell-responsive materials. Specifically, her research has resulted in advances in wound healing, methods to form bone, and discoveries in retinal and neural tissue engineering. In addition to biomedical research, Olabisi conducts research aimed at increasing the recruitment and persistence of minoritized groups in STEM. Towards that goal, in 2022 she held an NSF CAREER Writing Workshop during which the rhetorical patterns of successful applications were deconstructed for participants to better understand successful grantwriting structure. For her research, Olabisi is the recipient of a 2016 Engineering Information Foundation Award, a 2018 NSF CAREER Award, a 2019 Johnson & Johnson Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, Manufacturing, and Design (WiSTEM2D) Scholar Award, a 2019 Biomedical Engineering Society’s (BMES) Young Innovator in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Award, a 2022 BMES Diversity Lecture Award, and a 2022 NSF Workshop Award. She is a member of 100 Year Starship, an interdisciplinary DARPA-funded initiative that seeks to replicate the rapid technological development stimulated by the moon landings by imagining human interstellar travel. Olabisi earned her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT; two master’s degrees in mechanical engineering and in aeronautical engineering from the University of Michigan—Ann Arbor; and her doctoral degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She completed postdoctoral research in bioengineering with the West lab while it was at Rice University.

Dynamics and Mechanisms of CRISPR-Cas9 Through the Lens of Computational Methods

Giulia Palermo, Ph.D.

Giulia Palermo is a computational biophysicist, and Associate Professor at the University of California Riverside in the Department of Bioengineering. She is a native of Italy where she earned her PhD in 2013 from the Italian Institute of Technology. Her graduate studies led to more than 10 first-author papers, drawing on quantum chemistry and mixed quantum-classical methods to explore the mechanistic function of several enzymes. During her post-doc at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in the group of Prof. Ursula Rothlisberger, she worked on chromatin drug development and the mechanism of RNA splicing by the spliceosome. In 2016, she was awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation (NSF) post-doctoral fellowship to join the group of Prof. J. Andrew McCammon at the University of California San Diego. At UCSD, she worked on enhanced simulation methods to enable the study of increasingly realistic biological systems obtained through cryo-EM and tomography. Her group is best known for pioneering computational studies of the CRISPR-Cas9 system. By using state-of-the-art computer simulations, her lab characterizes the mechanism of action and engineers emerging genome editing systems that are transforming life sciences.

Imaging of Molecular Physiology 

Moriel Vandsburger, Ph.D.

Over the last decade I have worked to develop molecular imaging methodologies for quantitative imaging of integrative physiology from the level of viral capsids in genome editing all the way up to metabolic failure in heart and kidney disorders. My lab combines molecular and cellular biology, computational sciences, imaging physics, and both pre-clinical and human subject research to push the boundary of non-invasive diagnostic assays.

WNT-FZD signaling in Development and Disease

Karl Willert, Ph.D.

Karl Willert received his Ph.D. in 1996 in Biochemistry from UC San Francisco under the mentorship of Professor Harold Varmus. Upon completion of a post-doctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Professor Roel Nusse at Stanford University, he worked in the biotechnology sector. In 2005, he joined UC San Diego, initially to establish the Human Embryonic Stem Cell Core Facility, and then, in 2008, to build his independent research group. Willert’s research interests focus on the role of the WNT signaling pathway in development and disease. Using human pluripotent stem cells, the Willert lab selectively targets the WNT pathway to instruct specific differentiation programs with the goal of deriving mature cell populations suitable for therapeutic applications. Furthermore, mutations of WNT signaling components are frequently associated with cancer development and progression, and the Willert lab has developed tools and reagents to specifically target cancer cells that exhibit high WNT activity.