Current Members

Nenad Bursac

Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Embryonic and adult stem cell therapies for heart and muscle disease; cardiac and skeletal muscle tissue engineering; cardiac electrophysiology and arrhythmias; genetic modifications of stem and somatic cells; micropatterning of proteins and hydrogels.

Alastair Khodabukus

I work on developing more physiologically relevant tissue engineered skeletal muscle to study both healthy and diseased muscle physiology in human and rat cells.

Yongwu Li

I will provide Rodent surgery support for cardiac muscle and skeleton muscle tissue engineering studies.

Paula Scotland

Ike Emerson

I am studying the role of MAPK signaling in RASopathies to understand the signals that lead to cardiac hypertrophy versus hyperplasia.

Kevin Blum

Joonbum Lee

I work on the innervation and vascularization of tissue engineered skeletal muscle to enhance the cellular complexity of the in vitro model.

Tianyu Wu

My research focuses on developing prokaryotic voltage-gated sodium channels (BacNav) based gene therapies for cardiac arrhythmias.

Amber Detwiler

I am studying the role of macrophages in dysferlinopathy for their implementation in a tissue engineered skeletal muscle model.

Yiwen Gao

Abbi Helfer

I work on human cardiac tissue engineering from pluripotent stem cells, and gene editing.

Xixian Jiang

I am interested in studying the signaling pathways regulating cardiomyocyte proliferation and maturation.

Marisa Patsy

I am interested in the relationship between neurons and cardiomyocytes in the context of cardiac innervation, regeneration, and disease.

Tara Sheehan

Dylan Silkstone

I am studying the role of dysferlin in cardiac and skeletal muscle to identify protective mechanisms in dysferlinopathy.

Yiu Yan Siu

I am interested in sodium channel trafficking and developing gene therapy for arrhythmia.

Wanyu Zhang

I'm working with Dylan to investigate the role of dysferlin in our engineered cardiobundle system.

Rachel Luner

I am working with Amber to investigate immune and fibroadipogenic progenitor interactions in the context of dysferlinopathy.

Alex Schneider

I am working with Amber to study the role of macrophages in dysferlinopathy using our tissue engineered skeletal muscle model.

Anna Tornatore