Materials, Mechanics and Medicine (M3): Establishing Links through Bioengineering and Systems Biology

Project Summary

The M3 project brought together faculty and graduate students from Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Mechanical Engineering to develop basic scientific understanding relevant to uses of materials in regenerative medicine. The group's academic goal was to inform the development of novel therapies for regenerative medicine by developing bridges between scientific knowledge in colloidal materials, cellular mechanics, and regenerative medicine to understand interactions between cells and materials. The project's lead faculty further hoped to develop a new generation of graduate students who excel in interdisciplinary research and can translate their research findings to undergraduate education and clinical applications. The group pursued these goals by developing novel research collaborations across disciplines, engaging with visiting scholars in bioengineering, and broadening an existing undergraduate course in bioengineering to include interdisciplinary insights from the project. These collaborations developed graduate students’ skills in communicating across disciplines, enabled them to bring new research skills more effectively into undergraduate teaching, and were subsequently incorporated into some of their dissertations.