Elizabeth Lipke, PhD, is the Mary and John H. Sanders Associate Professor in the Dept. of Chemical Engineering at Auburn Univ. She completed her graduate studies at Rice Univ., followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins Univ. Her research focuses on the use of cell-material interactions to create cellular microenvironments that guide tissue formation and direct cellular function. To better understand congenital heart defect formation and advance cardiac regeneration, Lipke’s research group employs biomimetic materials to direct pluripotent stem cell differentiation and create 3D developing human engineered cardiac tissues; this platform for ontomimetic differentiation has been recently shown to also support in vitro cardiac tissue maturation, including t-tubule formation. To support cells in vivo, Lipke’s research group has established a platform for fabricating injectable, cell-laden hydrogel microspheres and demonstrated successful microsphere-based delivery of autologous endothelial progenitor cells in an equine wound healing model. Her research group is also investigating novel peptide ligands for capturing endothelial progenitor cells under physiological shear stress. For cancer research projects, the Lipke lab has created spheroidal and microfluidic chip-based tissue-engineered tumor models that recapitulate key native tumor characteristics for improved drug testing. In recognition of her work, she has received several national awards including a National Science Foundation CAREER award, a 3M Nontenured Faculty Award, and an American Heart Association Scientist Development Grant.