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.

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

I’m studying the calcium handling of pkp2-arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy

Marisa Patsy

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

Tara Sheehan

I am developing a human iPSC-derived co-culture tissue model to study cardiomyocyte-macrophage interactions. 

Yiu Yan Siu

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

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 the best undergrad in the Bursac Lab. 

Rachel Luner

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

Nathan Mulugeta

I am working with Marisa to support experiments investigating cardiac innervation using engineered cardiac tissue models.
 

Bianca Wertheimer

I am working with the BacNav team to develop a gene therapy for arrythmia and heart failure.