Tatiana Segura, Ph.D.
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Professor of Neurology
Professor of Dermatology
Pratt School of Engineering
Duke University
Seminar Information
Microporous annealed particle (MAP) scaffolds are materials composed of hydrogel microparticle building blocks. Thus, rather than use polymers as the building block that form the hydrogel, we use particles. This makes MAP scaffolds granular materials, which open unique properties such as inner porosity, exterior porosity, injectability, and heterogeneity. We have found that these properties make MAP uniquely suited for applications in tissue regeneration applications. We have found that simple changes in the MAP composition can have dramatic changes in the immune response to the material and subsequent regenerative healing response. This talk will cover the concept of MAP, software that we have developed to understand MAP microstructure, and some of our findings that relate the immune response and regenerative healing.
Professor Tatiana Segura received her BS degree in Bioengineering from the University of California Berkeley and her doctorate in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University. Her graduate work in designing and understanding non-viral gene delivery from hydrogel scaffolds was supervised by Prof. Lonnie Shea. She pursued post-doctoral training at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne under the guidance of Prof. Jeffrey Hubbell, where her focus was self-assembled polymer systems for gene and drug delivery. Professor Segura's Laboratory studies the use of materials for minimally invasive in situ tissue repair. On this topic she has published over 120 peered reviewed publications, 9319 citations, with an H index of 51. She has been recognized with the Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, the American Heart Association National Scientist Development Grant, and the CAREER award from National Science Foundation. She was Elected to the College of Fellows at the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineers (AIMBE) in 2017. She spent the first 11 years of her career at UCLA department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and has recently relocated to Duke University, where she holds appointments in Biomedical Engineering, Neurology and Dermatology.