Lowell Taylor Edgar - Graduate Student R.A. - MRL Lab

MEB 2460
phone (801) 587-7834
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advisor Jeff Weiss

Musculoskeletal Research Labs

Background

• Intern, Product Performance Evaluation, Ethicon Inc, a Johnson and Johnson Corporation
• MS Biomedical Engineering, Rutgers University
• BS Biomedical Engineering, Rutgers University

Current Responsibilities

Achieving proper vascularization is a major obstacle in engineering tissues in the lab. The project I work on involves trying to understand how mechanical signals are involved in angiogenesis, and it is our hope that with this understanding we will be able to engineer vasculature towards our own desires. My work in this project involves designing a computational model of angiogenesis, which we validate using in vitro experiments. With this model we hope to be able to understand how new blood vessels form and eventually predict angiogenesis for a given mechanostructural environment.

Research Interests

Cells organize into tissues as a result of a complex assortment of input, the most discussed of which are chemical and mechanical signals. While several biomedical engineers study the role of chemical signals in tissue formation, my interests lie in understanding how biomechanics play a role in tissue engineering. Using tools from computational engineering, I hope that better knowledge of the role of mechanical signaling in tissue development may lead to signifcant progress towards being able to engineer our own viable tissues to treat the millions of patients worldwide who require new organs and tissues.