David Kaplan holds an Endowed Chair, the Stern Family Professor of Engineering, at Tufts University. He is Professor & Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and also holds faculty appointments in the School of Medicine, the School of Dental Medicine, Department of Chemistry, Department of Biology, and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. His research focus is on biopolymer engineering to understand structure-function relationships, with emphasis on studies related to self-assembly, biomaterials engineering and on functional tissue engineering/regenerative medicine. He has published over 900 peer reviewed papers, including on a variety of structural proteins (collagens, elastins, resilins, silks). The lab has pioneered the study of silk-based biomaterials in regenerative medicine, from fundamental studies of the biochemistry, molecular biology and biophysical features to their impact on stem cell functions, medical device formation, and complex tissue formation. Studies in the lab are also focused on tissue engineering and regenerative medicine with the use of complex 3D tissue co-culture systems to establish and study human tissues in the laboratory. These systems have included generating human tissues of the brain, cornea, kidney, intestine, skin and others), including both normal and disease states. Interfaces with optical imaging tools are also exploited. He directed the NIH P41 Tissue Engineering Resource Center (TERC) that involves Tufts University and Columbia University from 2004-2019, he serves of the editorial boards of numerous journals and he is Editor in Chief for ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering. He has received a number of awards for teaching, was Elected Fellow American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, received the Society for Biomaterials Clemson Award for contributions to the literature and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.