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Mark Skylar-Scott Joins the Stanford Bioengineering Department

Headshot photo of Mark Skylar Scott

Mark Skylar-Scott is currently a research fellow at Harvard University, where his research focuses on cardiovascular tissue biomanufacturing.  He will be joining the Bioengineering Department as an Assistant Professor in July 2020. We asked him to share a few stories about himself and his interests.

What initially got you interested in Bioengineering?

It could be argued that living systems are the most complex machines in the universe. As an engineering undergraduate at Cambridge in the UK, I marveled at the challenge posed by understanding and fabricating living systems using engineering principles. Combining synthetic and living matter to sculpt and create functional tissue allows for boundless creativity, and with the potential for developing therapeutic grafts, offers the opportunity to make a real difference in people's lives.

What excites you about working at Stanford?
I am excited to work in the collaborative and interdisciplinary environment that Stanford embodies. I believe that 3D bioprinting will revolutionize our ability to control biology and build functional tissue. However, a 3D bioprinter is only as effective as the quality of the biological ink you supply it with, and the resulting tissue is only as functional as the instructions you provide it with to render a real and implantable product. Overcoming the complex challenges in bioprinting functional heart and vascular tissue will require large teams of clinicians, engineers, biologists, and materials scientists all working in lockstep. Stanford, with its world-leading Schools of Engineering and Medicine, is an ideal home for an organ manufacturing program.

What will your research at Stanford focus on?
My research, as part of the new Basic Science and Engineering (BASE) Initiative at the Children's Heart Center, will focus on deriving new biofabrication pipelines for making functional heart tissues and blood vessels for children with congenital heart defects (CHD). While we remain decades away from 3D bioprinting functional organs on demand, the staggering pace of advancement in synthetic biology, 3D printing, and stem cell engineering are revolutionizing our ability to manipulate and control living matter. Thus, the time is ripe for laying the groundwork for an organ biofabrication pipeline. We will be working at the intersection of molecular, cellular, and tissue engineering to identify paths forward to making human-scale tissues for therapeutics.

What do you want the Stanford/BioE community to know about you?
I love building things. Even more so, I love building things that build things. While my lab will focus on building cardiovascular tissues for pediatric patients, I believe that almost all research can benefit from fabrication technologies. If you are a student, faculty, or lay person interested in building something, I would be very happy to help!

What are some of your favorite past times/hobbies?
I enjoy(ed) long recreational bike rides, and I look forward to exploring the Bay Area on two wheels. I am an avid boardgamer, and I enjoy tinkering on the piano. However, most of my free time is now devoted to our newborn boy, which, I suppose, is my greatest biofabrication achievement to date.

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