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.

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.

Wanyu Zhang

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

Anna Tornatore