Principal Investigator

Mark A. Skylar-Scott, PhD
Assistant Professor, Bioengineering
Basic Science and Engineering (BASE) Initiative at the Betty Irene Moore Children’s Heart Center

Mark received his B.A. and M.Eng in Engineering at Cambridge University (Sidney Sussex College) in the UK in 2007. Under the supervision of Professor Mehmet Fatih Yanik at MIT from 2007-2012, Mark’s Ph.D. in Medical and Electrical Engineering involved the creation of new methods to use femtosecond lasers to print protein structures in 2D and 3D to direct neural and endothelial cell development. After his Ph.D., Mark had a brief foray into the startup world at Formlabs, where he developed and tested 3D printer resins for the Form 1 stereolithography printer. Mark performed his postdoctoral research from 2013-2020 with Jennifer Lewis at Harvard, where he developed new methods of manufacturing vascularized biological tissues, organoids, soft robotics, and metals. Mark is now a member of Stanford’s Basic Science and Engineering (BASE) Initiative of the Children’s Heart Center, where he aims to develop integrative strategies for billion- and trillion-cell bioprinting towards therapeutic scale and whole-organ biomanufacturing.

Research Staff and Scholars

Stacey Lee, PhD
Life Science Research Professional 3

Stacey received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering, with an additional major in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Under the supervision of Professor Sanjay Kumar, she earned her Ph.D. at the UC Berkeley-UCSF Graduate Program in Bioengineering. Her dissertation focused on understanding the biophysics of cell motility by combining single-cell micropatterning and femtosecond laser nanosurgery of the actin cytoskeleton. After her Ph.D. and postdoctoral studies in Dr. Kumar’s lab, she worked as a software developer at a biotech startup. At the Skylar-Scott lab, Stacey is working on developing microvascularized tissues. 

Debbie Ho
Academic Staff Researcher

Debbie graduated with her BSc Medical Science (Hons I) at the University of Edinburgh. She then completed her MRes in Stem Cell Biology and Medicine and MPhil in Clinical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. She is interested in ways to effectively scale up tissue culture for bioprinting.

Lee Fradkin, PhD
Senior Life Science Research Professional

Lee grew up in Detroit, MI and attended U of M, Ann Arbor for his BS and UCLA for his Ph. D. in molecular biology. After two stints as a postdoc at Stanford (Arthur Kornberg, Dept. Biochem. and Roel Nusse, Dept of Dev. Biol), he moved to biotech, focusing on both viral and non-viral gene therapy approaches. Subsequently, he moved to a faculty position at the Leiden University Medical Center  running a lab investigating the roles of the Dystrophin Glycoprotein Complex at various types of Drosophila synapses, as well as the role of non-Wnt/Fz Wnt signaling during nervous system development. After, some ~ 20 years, he moved back to the States, and upon a recommendation from his cardiologist, he joined the Skylar-Scott lab to lead the synthetic biology aspects of research and to help herd and mentor Mark’s ever-expanding lab.

Jianyi Du, PhD
Postdoctoral Scholar

Jianyi received his Ph.D. from MIT and both B.S. from Purdue University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. His Ph.D. work focuses on developing novel measuring techniques to characterize the complex rheological behavior for a variety of polymer and particulate material systems. He is excited to apply his knowledge in rheology and soft matter to enhance the understanding of biofabrication process and to develop innovative bioprinting protocols

Seo Woo Song, PhD
Visiting Assistant Professor

Seo Woo received his B.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University and has focused on biomedical engineering research. He is interested in technologies to interface living and synthetic things and 3D bioprinting as well.

Tony Tam
Cell Culture Technician

Tony completed his undergraduate in biochemistry from San Francisco State
University and done extensive work doing trace metal analysis for the
semiconductor industry. Then expanded his knowledge base in computer science
and biotechnology. Now his applying his array of skills to further the research of bio-fabrication.

Quiling (Linda) Wang
Cell Culture Technician

Qiuling received her M.D. from Fujian Medical University and her M.S. in Immunology from Tianjin Medical University. She has been involved in biomedical research for more than 20 years, with expertise in animal experimental models, micro-surgery, cell biology, and protein purification. She is excited to be part of the Skylar-Scott lab and is working on large-scale stem cell culturing to enable the 3D printing of cardiovascular tissue.

Students

Jessica Herrmann
M.D. Student, School of Medicine

Jessi completed her B.A. in Biomedical Engineering at Harvard College and M.S. in Bioengineering at Stanford. She is excited to research 3D bioprinting approaches to treating pediatric heart conditions.

Fredrik Solberg
Ph.D. Student, Mechanical Engineering

Fredrik completed his M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His interests include innovative design and application of medical technology.

Danielle Klinger
Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering

Danielle completed her B.Sc. in Life Sciences from Ben-Gurion University, her M.Sc. in Computational Biology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and was a research associate at Clalit Research Institute. She is excited about building devices that will improve cardiac organoid systems.

Coco Sanabria
B.S. Student, Bioengineering

Coco is a Bioengineering undergrad working on completing her Honors Thesis in improving homogenous bioprinting of cells. She is interested in medical device innovation and sustainable design. 

Joey McCoy
B.S. Student, Bioengineering

Joey is a second-year undergraduate studying Bioengineering at Stanford. He is interested in seeing how synthetic biology and protein engineering apply to 3D bioprinting research.

Alana Mermin-Bunnell
B.S. Student, Bioengineering

Alana is currently a senior at Stanford studying bioengineering. In the Skylar-Scott lab, Alana works on the multimaterial low-cost bioprinter project, and she is excited to continue research in bioprinting, translational tissue engineering, and microfluidics in the future. 

Jonathan Weiss
Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering

Jonathan completed his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering at Yale, where he worked on characterizing the contractility of isolated cardiomyocytes. He is very excited to use hiPSCs to 3D bioprint cardiovascular tissue constructs that can be used as therapeutic implants.

Soham Sinha
Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering

Soham completed his BS in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and BS in Chemistry at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is excited about applying biological, chemical, and engineering concepts to develop advanced biomanufacturing methods.

Joshua Sampson
Ph.D. Student, Bioengineering

Josh completed a B.S.E and M.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering at the Univ. of Michigan. He is interested in creating new biological technologies through protein engineering, tissue engineering, and synthetic biology.

Dorothea Wiebecke
Visiting Master's Student

Dorothea is a visiting student researcher from ETH Zurich where she studies Process Engineering. She works on encapsulation techniques to scale up cell production, enabling high-throughput research in tissue engineering.

Annie (Nghi) Nguyen
Ph.D. Rotating Student

Annie completed her B.E. in Biomedical Engineering at Vietnam National University. She then received her MPhil in Therapeutic Sciences from the University of Cambridge and was also a Chevening Scholar. Her research interests include biomaterials, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and bioprinting.

Administration

Hadley Bickford, BA, RVT
Administrative Associate supporting Dr. Mark Skylar-Scott