Awarded in 2007
Home Department: Bioengineering
Faculty Advisor: Annelise Barron (Bioengineering)

Research Title: Engineering of Collagenous Proteins and Protein Hydrogels for Biomedical Applications

Research Description: Tissue engineering is an exciting and revolutionary strategy to overcome the problem of donor shortage in tissue transplantation. The Barron lab investigates appropriate scaffolds mimicking the natural extracellular matrices, which deliver the cells to the desired site, provide a space for new tissue formation, and potentially control the structure and function of the new tissue. Sheng’s research project was to create protein polymer hydrogels that are enzymatically cross-linked as tissue engineering scaffolds. These new hydrogels are biocompatible and biodegradable. Using genetic engineering, the Barron lab could modify these hydrogels for particular requirements for specific tissue engineering applications by designing the amino acid sequence, chain length, and block spacing of the protein polymers.

WHERE IS SHE NOW?

Sheng works at Gilead, one of the world’s leaders in the biopharma industry, as a Director of Protein Therapeutics.