MAE Seminar – Multiscale Modeling and Control of Cell and Tissue Mechanobiology

Details

MAE Seminar – Multiscale Modeling and Control of Cell and Tissue Mechanobiology

Thursday, March 28, 2024, at 12:50pm, Location: MAE-A 303

Guy M. Genin, Ph.D, Harold and Kathleen Faught Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Washington University

Abstract
Mechanical forces play a crucial role in shaping cell behavior within dynamic biological tissues. Multiscale models that predict the recursive interactions between cells, tissues, and their mechanical environments require integrating mechanics with biochemical reaction networks and integrating experiments with theory. The NSF Science and Technology Center for Engineering Mechanobiology aims to enable translational engineering of tissue-engineered cures and of model systems by developing, verifying, and applying multiscale models to harness these recursive interactions. This talk will present efforts to experimentally and theoretically model how mechanical stress fields affect the activation of the fibroblast cells that drive mechanical contraction in wound healing, including combined experimental and computational approaches that reveal how coupled biochemical and mechanical phenomena in cells and matrix can be controlled to prescribe the degree of contractility of a model tissue. Applications to fibrosis and skin grafting will be discussed.

Biography
Guy M. Genin uses engineering approaches to control and probe living systems for the purpose of advancing surgical techniques, mechanobiology, and therapies for inflammation, wound healing, and fibrosis. Genin serves as the Harold and Kathleen Faught Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Washington University, with appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Neurological Surgery. At Xi’an Jiaotong University, he serves as Thousand Talents Plan Professor of Life Sciences. Genin co-directs the NSF Science and Technology Center for Engineering Mechanobiology and serves on the U.S. Interagency Modeling and Analysis Group’s steering committee, the Society of Engineering Science’s Board of Directors, and the ASME Bioengineering Division’s Executive Committee. A fellow of ASME, AIMBE, and the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, Genin is the chief engineer of Caeli Vascular, Inc. and CTO of Inflexion Vascular, LLC. Genin is the recipient of awards for research, education, and design, including a Research Career Award from the NIH, the Skalak Award from ASME, the Changjiang Scholar Award from the Chinese Ministry of Education, and the Eads Medal from the St. Louis Academy of Science. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Case Western Reserve University and master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard. He completed postdoctoral training at Cambridge and Brown.

MAE Faculty Host: Xin Tang