Duncan Davis-Hall, bioengineering PhD student, received an F31 predoctoral grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to bioprint three-dimensional mimics of lung blood vessels that model the environmental stiffening seen in pulmonary arterial hypertension. He intends to combine human cells from blood vessels in the lung with polymer biomaterials made in the lab to study cell behavior in the context of this disease, which impacts women four times more frequently than men.

This research project will take place in the Magin Lab for Bio-Inspired Pulmonary Engineering. The Magin Lab focuses on creating biomaterial models of lung disease that mimic the complex and dynamic relationship between cells and their environments. Projects in this lab bridge the gap between benchtop and clinical research to advance precision medicine.