(5aw) Engineering Cells and Tissues for Therapeutic Applications Via Simulation and Experiment

I will present an overview of my PhD and postdoctoral research, which were aimed at (1) engineering an artificial bone tissue and (2) gaining a fundamental understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which cells sense microenvironmental cues. Specifically, the first focus of this poster is the fabrication of polymeric matrices for bone tissue engineering applications. This part also focuses on the applications of stem cells and drug delivery approaches to control blood vessel formation in engineered matrices. The second focus of this poster is the development of a probabilistic mathematical model for the simulation of blood vessel formation in biomaterials. The third focus of this poster is the design of instructive extracellular matrix (ECM) substrates for programming cell behavior.