Dr. Bhatia trained at Brown, MIT, Harvard, and MGH. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation. She has been awarded the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship given to "the nation's most promising young professors in science and engineering," the NSF CAREER Award, the Y.C. Fung Young Investigator Award of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the Young Investigator Award of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology, and the Brown Engineering Alumni Medal. As a passionate mentor and advocate for diversity in science and engineering, she has been the recipient of the Harvard Medical School Diversity Award and the Harvard-MIT Thomas McMahon Mentoring Award. She co-authored the first undergraduate textbook on tissue engineering and is a frequent advisor to governmental organizations on nanobiotechnology, biomedical microsystems, and tissue engineering. She is the co-founder of two startup companies. She has published well over 100 manuscripts which have been cited a total of over 8800 times. She holds over 25 issued or pending patents and has worked in industry at Pfizer, Genetics Institute, ICI Pharmaceuticals, and Organogenesis.

Education
M.D., Harvard Medical School;
Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology;
M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology;
B.S., Biomedical Engineering, Brown University;

E-mail: sbhatia@mit.edu

I am the administrative assistant of Sangeeta Bhatia and LMRT. I grew up in California, New Jersey, and Texas, and received my B.S. in Psychology from U.T. Austin and M.S. in Educational Psychology from Texas A&M University. I started working at M.I.T. in 2000 and joined the LMRT group in 2005.
E-mail: kangiser@mit.edu

I completed my undergraduate training at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, earning my B.Sc.H in Life Sciences in 1996. My PhD was granted in 2002 by University of Toronto’s Immunology department, for my research performed in the laboratory of Christopher Paige at the Ontario Cancer Institute in Princess Margaret Hospital. My work focused on the signaling pathways responsible for an essential selection point in early B lymphocyte differentiation. I continued to explore how microenvironmental signals influence cell fate decisions during postdoctoral work with David Scadden at Massachusetts General Hospital. While part of this group, I helped design, implement and direct an undergraduate research intern program at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. I moved from the bench to scientific publishing when I joined Cell Press as a founding editor of the journal Cell Stem Cell. I joined LMRT in the fall of 2011, where I serve as a “chief of staff” to the Director, Dr Bhatia, by helping to oversee the research and operations of the entire group. In this role, I function as an internal resource person for all matters related to experimental design and conduct, scientific paper and grant writing. I also work to support and promote the professional development of all group members.
E-mail: hfleming@mit.edu

I was born in São Paulo - Brazil and I came to the United States as an exchange student in 2004. I received my Associates degree in Biology from Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) in 2008. Upon graduating from BHCC, I received The Community College Graduate Scholarship from Boston University where I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Laboratory and Clinical Science in 2011.
E-mail: liaing@mit.edu

I received my Ph.D. in Cell Biology from University of Barcelona I Hospital Clinic working on the biology of hepatic stellate cells in the context of liver pathophysiology. In the Bhatia laboratory, I have been interested in understanding the maintenance of the functional phenotype of cultured liver sinusoidal cells and hepatocytes with the goal of developing in vitro systems that better recapitulate liver biology. Recently, we have started to use these models to recapitulate and characterize the liver stage of Malaria infection. Our current goals are to establish a reproducible human platform in order to 1) study the biology of the infection process in the liver; 2) screen compounds for activity against the liver stage of Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax (including the hypnozoite); and 3) develop and validate pre-erythrocytic vaccines.
E-mail: smarch@mit.edu

I completed my B.S. degree in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley in 2002 and my Ph.D. in Bioengineering in 2009 from California Institute of Technology. My thesis work was supervised by Dr. James R. Heath and focused on the development of DNA-encoded in vitro diagnostic platforms for on-chip multiplexed profiling of biological targets, specifically sorting and detecting cancer-specific T cells for cancer immunotherapy, high density microfluidic immunoassays and multidimensional molecular analyses of surgically resected glioblastoma tumors. Here at LMRT, I am interested in engineering modular nanoparticles for cancer therapeutics and developing diagnostic platforms for screening in vivo dysregulation of complex diseases.
E-mail: gakwong@MIT.EDU

Kelly R. Stevens was born in New Richmond, Wisconsin. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she worked in the laboratory of Dr. Weiyuan John Kao to study the inflammatory response to gelatin-based biodegradable hydrogels. Prior to attending graduate school, she worked in the Stent R&D and Applied Research groups at Boston Scientific in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy from the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington under the guidance of Dr. Charles E. Murry in 2008. Her thesis work focused on controlling cell proliferation and tissue formation for myocardial repair. Kelly is interested in using tools in cellular and molecular biology, nano/microscale engineering, and biomaterials science to advance stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. Her work in the Bhatia Laboratory focuses on studying cell-cell interactions in three-dimensional engineered liver tissue.
Email: stevensk@mit.edu

I received my B.E. in Chemical Engineering from the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 1999, my Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering and my M.D. both from the University of Minnesota in 2006. My thesis work was performed in the laboratories of Drs. Catherine Verfaillie and Wei-Shou Hu and focused on the use of adult and embryonic stem cells to generate hepatocyte-like cells. We found that extracellular matrix and cellular organization influences hepatocyte differentiation and function in vitro. Here at LMRT, we are using tools in cellular and molecular biology along with microscale engineering on the two dimensional and three dimensional level to study the hepatocyte-like cell differentiation of embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells. We are interested in this system to study hepatic differentiation, the role of cell-ECM interactions in the differentiation process, and the development of diagnostic hepatic platforms to study human disease.
E-mail: rschwar@mit.edu

I was born in Croydon, Pennsylvania, a suburb immediately outside Philadelphia. I received my B.S. in Chemistry at Temple University in Philadelphia. At Temple, I studied under Dr. Robert Stanley investigating the requirement for DNA base-flipping during Photolyase mediated UV DNA damage repair. Subsequently, I was employed as a research technician in Dr. Michael Hauser’s lab within the Center for Human Genetics at Duke University. I worked on developing a mouse model of Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy type 1A (LGMD1A). Next, I worked at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Dr. Deborah O’Brien’s lab investigating protein requirements for sperm motility and fertilization. I went on to earn my PhD in Biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under the supervision of Dr. Frank Conlon. My thesis work focused on determining the molecular mechanisms required for cardiomyocyte progenitors to initiate differentiation. Through my PhD studies, I became very interested in tissue development and how developmental molecular mechanisms can be employed to address the regenerative capacity of tissues for the treatment of human disease. My postdoctoral work in Dr. Bhatia’s lab focuses on exosome mediated cell-cell interactions and their impact on the stability of engineered liver tissue. E-mail: kchristi@mit.edu

Sabine Hauert received her Masters in Computer Science in 2006 from the EPFL in Switzerland where she also completed her PhD in robotics in 2010. Her main research interest is to make swarms of simple agents work together towards real-world applications. Along this line, she investigated ways of deploying large numbers of flying robots to create communication networks in disaster scenarios (SMAVNET project) during her thesis at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems. Currently, she aims to apply swarm engineering to nanoparticles for the intelligent treatment of cancer. For this research, she was awarded a Human Frontiers in Science Program Fellowship for cross-disciplinary research in 2011. Besides research, Sabine is passionate about disseminating knowledge about science to the general public thanks to award winning videos and the Robots podcast which she co-founded and presides. Over the last four years, she has interviewed nearly 100 top roboticists from industry and academia for their expert view on robotics. Sabine is also Media Editor for one of the major robotics journals "Autonomous Robots" and as such is responsible for presenting the latest publications in robotics in a fresh and interactive manner on the Autonomous Robots Blog. For more information, check sabinehauert.com .
Email: shauert@mit.edu

Tal comes from a synthetic biology background and received his Ph.D from UCSD (Jeff Hasty's lab). His thesis work focused on synthetic gene oscillators and their applications in bacteria. Here at LMRT, Tal is interested in research at the interface of synthetic biology and nanotechnology. For more see tal.mit.edu.
Email: tdanino@mit.edu

Ester received a B.S. in Bioengineering and a B.A. in Molecule & Cell Biology from UC Berkeley in 2004 and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Washington at Seattle in 2010. She completed her doctoral work in the laboratory of Dr. Suzie Pun developing nucleic acid delivery vehicles decorated with peptides to mediate targeting and endosomal escape for applications to the central nervous system. From there, she studied the dysregulation of microRNA 137 in psychiatric disorders in the laboratory of Li-Huei Tsai at MIT. In the Bhatia group, Ester is interested in understanding how nanoparticulate materials behave in biological systems and applying this information to the development of siRNA delivery platforms for cancer therapeutics. Email: ekwon@mit.edu

Kartik was born in New York where he attended Ward Melville High School. He received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University in 2007, followed by an M.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering and an M.S.E. in Applied Mathematics also from Johns Hopkins in 2008. He was awarded the Richard J. Johns Award by the Department of Biomedical Engineering and the AM&S Achievement Award by the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics for outstanding academic achievement.

Kartik's research experience at Johns Hopkins included tissue engineering scaffold design for blood vessel and peripheral nerve regeneration under Dr. Hai-Quan Mao, statistical signal analysis for characterizing the nanostructure of actin-based motility under Drs. Scot Kuo and Carey Priebe, bioimpedance-measuring instrumentation for the detection of preterm labor under Drs. Robert Allen and Edith Gurewitsch, and pull-out resistant orthopedic pedicle screws for osteoporotic patients under Dr. Jay Khanna. His work has culminated in several publications, patents, and scientific awards.

As a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, Kartik is pursuing a doctorate in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Science and Technology. His present research involves the design of regenerative technologies, particularly for the liver, and he sees his position at Harvard and MIT more broadly as an opportunity to contribute his best to the advancement of human health.

Kartik is grateful for the strong role his research and academic advisors have played in his scientific development. He is most thankful however for the continued support of his family and mentor to whom he attributes his progress.
Email: enzyme@mit.edu

Nate received his Bachelor's in Mechanical Engineering from Tufts University in 2006. His undergrad research focused on the use of ultrasound to characterize the stiffness matrix of anisotropic materials (in particular, Grenadilla wood). He received is Master's in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008, where his research focused on the use of the thermosensitive hydrogel poly(NIPAAm) in microfluidic valves. At LMRT, Nate is working on a microfluidic platform for analyzing the adhesion of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) to various types of matrix molecules and their growth in response to various soluble factors.
Email: nathanrf@mit.edu

Meghan went to high school in Canada, where she was a National Gold Medallist in the Canadian Fermat Mathematics Competition. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Columbia University, NYC, in May 2007 with a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering. As an undergraduate, Meghan did research at the Biomaterial and Interface Tissue Engineering Laboratory, studying how osteoblast-fibroblast interactions modulate cell phenotypes via autocrine and paracrine regulations. She also held a research fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. At Columbia, she was named the MacLaren Scholar and received the Claire S. and Robert E. Reiss Prize for graduating seniors judged most likely to contribute substantially to the Biomedical Engineering field.

Currently, Meghan is doing research with miniature in vitro liver models, using them for high-throughput screens with applications in compound safety testing, hepatic tissue engineering and liver regeneration.
Email: js8686@mit.edu

Cheri received her B.S. in chemical engineering from Stanford University in 2004. While at Stanford, her undergraduate thesis work with Professor Curtis Frank focused on protein diffusion through temperature-sensitive hydrogels. She was also a Merck Engineering & Technology Fellow and interned at Merck during the summers of 2006 and 2007. Cheri is currently a Ph.D. candidate in chemical engineering at MIT, supported by the NSF and NDSEG graduate fellowships. Her research interests include applying polymer materials to problems in tissue engineering.
Email: cheriyli@mit.edu

Kevin Lin received his B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2008. ÊHe is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in the Chemical Engineering Department at MIT. ÊHis research is focused on the development of multifunctional nanocarriers for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
Email: kylin@mit.edu

Shengyong received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2008. As an undergraduate, he worked in the lab of Dr. Jennifer Elisseeff, where he developed collagen vitrigel membranes for the reconstruction of corneal tissue. From 2008-2009, he worked with Dr. Motoichi Kurisawa at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore, where he designed and developed nanogel complexes comprising hyaluronic acid-green tea catechin conjugates and proteins for the targeted induction of apoptosis of cancer cells. Shengyong is currently pursuing a PhD degree in the Biological Engineering Department at MIT under a fellowship from A*STAR, Singapore. He is interested in developing three-dimensional models of infectious diseases that affect the liver and liver regeneration.
E-mail: syng@mit.edu

Alex Bagley received B.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering and Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008, graduating Phi Beta Kappa as a two-year recipient of the Barry M. Goldwater Congressional Scholarship. At MIT, Alex worked in the laboratory of Prof. David Sabatini at the Whitehead Institute, where he studied the anti-proliferative mechanisms of rapamycin on the mTOR pathway as well as nutrient-mediated chemotaxis of cancer cells in microfluidic devices. Alex was selected as a Merck Engineering and Technology Fellow in 2007. He has also served as an engineering consultant at Joule Unlimited, Inc., a Cambridge-based biotechnology company developing next-generation biofuels. Beyond academics and research, Alex played on the MIT Men's Varsity Basketball team and was selected to the 2008 Academic All-Conference and Second Team All-District ESPN the Magazine Academic All-America teams.
Alex is currently pursuing an M.D./Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School in the Division of Health Sciences & Technology (HST) and the Biophysics Program at Harvard University. His research at the Koch Institute and LMRT focuses on engineering and applying nanotechnologies to impact the clinical management of cancer. Working with doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital, he is currently investigating the application of novel nanotherapeutic protocols in models of ovarian cancer and sarcoma. Alex is funded through the NIH Medical Scientist Training Program.
E-mail: abagley@mit.edu

Justin graduated from MIT in 2008 with a B.S. in Biological Engineering and a B.S. in Music. His undergraduate research in the lab of Bevin Engelward focused on the development of a partially-automated high-throughput assay for DNA damage to be used in toxicology screens and to study DNA repair kinetics. He is presently an MD-PhD student at Harvard Medical School and MIT. During his first year in medical school, he was involved in the design, manufacture, and testing of cellular and acellular lung assist devices in the lab of Joseph P. Vacanti. At LMRT, Justin is interested in designing new nanoparticle-based strategies for enhancing drug and diagnostic delivery, including work interfacing with synthetic biology to create nanoparticles which modify their behavior and payload in a tumor context-dependent manner.
E-mail: jhlo@mit.edu

Andrew is from Orlando, FL and received his B.S. from Johns Hopkins University in 2011. While at Hopkins, he investigated cartilage tissue engineering and studied Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics & Statistics. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. In lab, Andrew is studying interactions between tumor cells and supporting stromal cells in the development of the metastatic niche using microfluidics to controllably generate and study large numbers of micron-scale cell-encapsulated hydrogels. Email: adwarren@mit.edu

Vyas graduated summa cum laude in 2011 from the University of Pennsylvania’s Management & Technology (M&T) program with a B.S.E. and M.S.E. in Bioengineering from the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and a B.S. in Economics with concentrations in Management and Statistics from the Wharton School. At Penn, Vyas worked in the lab of Prof. Jason Burdick to design light-responsive biomaterials for controlling drug/protein delivery and cell adhesion/morphology, and in the lab of Prof. Ravi Radhakrishnan to study the biology of clathrin-mediated endocytosis with multiscale computational models. Vyas received the Herman P. Schwan Bioengineering Award and Management & Technology Scholarship Award for his contributions. He also worked as a summer analyst at venture capital firm Lux Capital, and has served as a consultant to multiple biotechnology startups. Vyas is currently an MIT Presidential Graduate Fellow pursuing a Ph.D. in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. His research at LMRT involves the development of 3D tissue engineered implantable liver constructs to study the biology and treatment of infectious disease, and his general interests include engineering solutions to fundamental global problems in human health and resource scarcity. Email: vyas@mit.edu

I grew up in Massachusetts, and attended Belmont High School. I received my Bachelor's degree in Biology from Boston University in 2010. While at BU, I interned at the Proteomics platform of the Broad Institute, and became interested in biological research. I am now working on the Malaria platform, studying the liver stage of Malaria in vitro. Email: agalstia@broadinstitute.org

Yin went to Vincent Massey Secondary School in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, and graduated from MIT in 2006 with a S.B. degree in electrical and biomedical engineering. While at MIT, he worked in Prof. Jongyoon Han's laboratory designing and developing microfluidic devices for protein separation and preconcentration. He also worked in the radiation oncology physics division at MGH and University of Michigan, developing a respiratory-gated integrated radiation therapy system.

Yin is currently pursuing a MD-PhD degree in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Harvard Medical School and in the Division of Health Sciences and Technology at MIT. He is interested in the application of nanotechnologies to human disease, such as cancer. He hopes to engineer novel nanomaterials to better image, target and deliver therapeutics to various disease processes.
Email: yinren@mit.edu

Alice Chen received a B.S. degree in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley in 2003. From 2001-2003, Alice worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the biotechnology and microtechnology departments on projects ranging from epidemiology studies for elucidating mechanisms of cancer to device design/testing for gene synthesis and miniaturized PCR. After graduation, Alice joined the Biodefense division of LLNL as a Biomedical scientist. Her research focused on direct delivery of modified siRNA for gene silencing and on the development of a pressure-based platform for capturing and sustaining single cells.

Alice is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in the Division of Health Sciences & Technology at MIT and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. She is interested in the application of novel biomaterials and nanotechnologies to tissue engineering, and her research focuses on the development and assessment of 3D implantable, hepatic tissues. She is supported by NSF and NDSEG graduate research fellowships.
Email: aachen@mit.edu

Salil received his Bachelor's from Carnegie Mellon University in Electrical and Computer Engineering with Carnegie Institute of Technology and University Honors. Prior to attending MIT, Salil worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Reseach Center and Bosch Research Technology Center on MEMS devices and process characterization. At MIT, Salil received a S.M. and Ph.D. in EECS working in MEMS and BioMEMS metrology. in 2009, Salil won the MGH-MIT Fellowship in Translational Medicine and worked jointly with LMRT and the MGH BioMEMS Resource Center on cancer cell migration. At LMRT, Salil has broad interests in cell/molecule patterning, microfluidics, and phenotypic screening. At the Koch Institute, Salil has helped start the Engineering Genius Bar and remains active in spearheading this effort. E-mail: desai@mit.edu

I received my Ph.D. in Chemistry from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008 working with Prof. L. Andrew Lyon on developing novel synthetic routes towards the design of hydrogel nanoparticles with structural and chemical complexities that can be easily interfaced with biological systems relevant to biomedicine. Here at MIT's LMRT, I have been interested in developing nanomaterials for achieving and investigating RNAi therapy.
E-mail: sneetu@mit.edu

I received my B.S. in Chemical Engineering in 1997 and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering in 2003, both from Northwestern University. My thesis work was performed in the laboratory of Dr. Geoffrey Kansas in the department of Microbiology-Immunology and focused on the adhesive properties and chemotactic responsiveness of antibody secreting plasma cells, as well as the gene expression alterations underlying plasma cell differentiation. In LMRT, we are interested in cell-cell interactions within the liver microenvironment and the differentiation of bipotential hepatic stem cells as a basis for tissue engineered structures.
E-mail: gunderhi@mit.edu

I received my B.S. (Physics) from NC State University in 2001, and I received my Ph.D. (Physics) from UC Santa Barbara in 2007. I did my thesis work with Andrew Cleland, developing high throughput electronic particle analysis for microfluidic systems.
My work at LMRT is focused on solving relevant problems in tissue engineering and medicine using microtechnology and microfluidics. Currently, we are working to develop a high throughput assay for screening DNA damage in single cells. This technology will enable large scale studies of the effects of environmental factors on cellular DNA damage and repair capacity. Additionally, I am working on new methods to build vasculature for in vitro liver tissue constructs, which will improve their long term viability.
E-mail: dkwood@mit.edu

David received his MSc in Biological Engineering in 2007 from IST (Instituto Superiror Técnico), Lisboa, Portugal. Now he is pursuing his PhD within the MIT Portugal Program working at LMRT at MIT and SCBL at IST. His research focuses on the bone marrow microenvironment and the interactions between mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) and hematopoietic stem cells (HSC). He aims at the clarification of the mechanisms of the niche that control the stem cell pool towards the ex vivo large scale expansion of HSC.
Email: dmalta@mit.edu