Current Members
Principal Investigator

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.
Research Scientists

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.
Laboratory Staff
Post-Doctoral Associates

Ethan Lotz
I am interested in developing functional neuromuscular junctions in vitro, the roles immune and glial cells play in the innervation of skeletal muscle, and regenerative strategies for the reinnervation of skeletal muscle following volumetric muscle loss in vivo.
Graduate Students

Torie Broer
I am studying how the presence of immune cells affects the development and function of engineered skeletal muscle tissue.

Sophia DeLuca
I am working on cardiomyocyte proliferation in the context of regeneration.

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

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

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

Jacob Scherba
I am interested in the relationship between cardiac fibroblasts, cardiomyocytes, and the extracellular matrix as it relates to the biomechanics of cardiac disease and regeneration.

Nicholas Strash
I am currently interested in studying the role of polyploidy in the context of proliferation and maturation of human iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes.

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

Sarah Broders
I am interested in studying cardiomyocyte proliferation.

Chloe Derocher
I'm interested in demonstrating a functional synaptic connection in a tissue-engineered model of the neuromuscular junction in order to study motor neuron innervation of muscle in healthy and diseased states.
Ishika Gupta
I am a sophomore at Duke pursuing a biology major on the pre-med track. In this lab, I will be helping study how the presence of immune cells effects the development and function of engineered skeletal muscle tissue.

James Koconis
I am interested in developing prokaryotic sodium channel-based gene therapies for cardiac arrhythmias.

Allison Kuo
I am interested in human cardiac tissue engineering and its applications in cardiac regeneration and disease.

Amber Miranda
I am studying regenerative cardiomyocyte proliferation and working on developing an in vivo heart injury model.

Ashley Myers
I am currently studying methods to induce cardiomyocyte proliferation.
Nick Tsintolas
I am interested in the development and function of engineering skeletal muscle tissues.