Manu Platt

Dr. Manu Platt became the inaugural director of the NIH-wide Center for Biomedical Engineering Technology Acceleration (BETA Center) housed within NIBIB, as a new NIH campus model for accelerating technology-driven interdisciplinary research and clinical translation and to bring engineering, clinicians, and basic scientists together in February 2023. Dr. Manu Platt earned his B.S. in Biology from Morehouse College and Ph.D. from Georgia Tech/Emory in Biomedical Engineering. After a postdoc at MIT, he returned to Georgia Tech/Emory’s joint department as an Assistant Professor where he worked up to promotion to full Professor. His research program focuses on proteolytic mechanisms of disease, translational approaches to reduce strokes in people affected by sickle cell disease, and harnessing proteolytic networks and systems biology tools to predict disease progression. Among other awards, Dr. Platt was awarded the Biomedical Engineering Society Diversity Award, is a Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), Fellow of Biomedical Engineering Society, the Root 100 in 2019, and AAAS Mentor Award in 2021.

Dr. Milica Radisic is a Professor at the University of Toronto, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering and a Senior Scientist at the Toronto General Research Institute. She is also Director of the NSERC CREATE Training Program in Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering & Entrepreneurship and a co-lead for the Center for Research and Applications in Fluidic Technologies. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada-Academy of Science, Canadian Academy of Engineering, the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering, Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine Society as well as Biomedical Engineering Society. She was a recipient of the MIT Technology Review Top 35 Under 35, Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, NSERC E.W.R Steacie Fellowship, YWCA Woman of Distinction Award, Killam Fellowship, Acta Biomaterialia Silver Medal, and Humboldt Research Award to name a few. Her research focuses on organ-on-a-chip engineering and development of new biomaterials that promote healing and attenuate scarring. She developed new methods to mature iPSC derived cardiac tissues using electrical stimulation. She is an Executive Editor for ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, Senior Consulting Editor for the Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, a reviewing editor for eLife and a member of the editorial board of another 8 journals. She served on the Board of Directors for Ontario Society of Professional Engineers, Canadian Biomaterials Society and McMaster University Alumni Association. She organized Keystone, EMBO and ECI conferences and numerous sessions at TERMIS and BMES meetings.  She served as a Scientific Officer for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and member of review panels for CIHR, NIH and Israel Ministry of Education. She is the Chair of Investment Committee for Serbia Innovation Fund. She is a co-founder of two companies TARA Biosystems (acquired by Valo Health), that uses human engineered heart tissues in drug development and safety testing, and Quthero that advances regenerative hydrogels. Her work has been presented in over 260 publications, garnering over 23,000 citations with an h-index of 74. Her publications  appeared in Cell, Nature Materials, Nature Methods, Nature Protocols, Nature Communications, PNAS etc.
 

Ritu Raman

Tissue Engineering Multicellular Models of the Motor Control System for Medicine and Machines (ABSTRACT)
Friday March 28^th | 9:45 – 10:15

Eugene Bell Career Development Assistant Professor of Tissue Engineering
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
 
Ritu Raman, PhD is the Eugene Bell Career Development Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. Her lab is centered on 4D tissue engineering of biological actuators for applications in medicine and machines. Ritu’s research has received several recognitions including the NSF CAREER Award, the Army Research Office YIP Award, and the Office of Naval Research YIP Award. She is also the recipient of the Spira Award for Excellence in Teaching at MIT and the author of the MIT Press book Biofabrication. Ritu received her BS from Cornell University and her PhD as an NSF Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She completed her postdoctoral research as a L’Oreal For Women in Science Fellow and NASEM Ford Foundation Fellow with Prof. Robert Langer at MIT. RamanLab@mit.edu | @DrRituRaman

Human immune organoids and immune-on-chip to decode immunity in healthy donors and cancer patients (ABSTRACT)
Friday March 28^th | 11:15 – 11:45

Ankur Singh is a Carl Ring Family Professor in George W. Woodru7 School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology with a joint appointment in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. At Georgia Tech, he serves as the Director of the Center for Immunoengineering. Before Georgia Tech, he was a tenured Associate Professor at Cornell University. He is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. His laboratory develops human immune organoids and enabling technologies to understand healthy and diseased
immune cells and translate therapeutics. He has received funding from the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, Wellcome Leap HOPE, Department of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, the Curci Foundation, and Lymphoma and Leukemia Society. He has published >70 articles in peer-reviewed journals, including Nature Methods, Nature Materials, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Immunology, Nature Communications, Nature Reviews Materials, Nature Protocols, Science Advances, Cell Reports, PNAS, Blood, and Advanced Materials. He has written multiple editorials for Science Translational Medicine. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER, Society for Biomaterials Mid Career Award, Society for Biomaterials Young Investigator Award, CMBE
Young Innovator Award, CMBE Rising Star Award, 3M Faculty Award, DoD Career award, Georgia Tech CIOS Teaching Award, Cornell’s Teaching Excellence Award, and Cornell’s Research Excellence Award. His first generation immune organoids were identified among the Top 100 Discoveries of 2015 by Discover Magazine. He is the Founder and past Chair of the Immune Engineering SIG at the Society for Biomaterials and Controlled Release Society. He currently serves as the Associate Editor for Science Advances, Biomaterials, and Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering.