April Kloxin Inaugural Lecture

Bioinspired materials have the potential to transform how we study disease and develop new therapies, but only when advances in materials, biology and engineering work together. In this lecture, April Kloxin will explore how molecularly engineered materials inspired by human tissues can reveal how cells respond to their surroundings and create new opportunities in biomanufacturing and therapeutic development.

April Kloxin Elizabeth Inez Kelley Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Building Bioinspired Materials and Pathways to Impact

Kloxin and her research group design synthetic matrices with controlled biochemical, structural, mechanical and dynamic properties. These materials allow researchers to investigate how cells respond to changes in their microenvironments during injury and chronic diseases, including fibrosis and cancer. They also offer ways to direct cell behavior for applications in biomanufacturing and in the development and delivery of biologics and cell-based therapies.

The lecture will also highlight the collaborative nature of scientific progress. Drawing on work at the University of Delaware, Kloxin will reflect on the mentors, trainees, faculty, staff and collaborators who have helped move ideas from molecular design to application. She will discuss how integrating biomaterials with advanced imaging, bioprinting, cellular and molecular tools, and flow-based processing can create new platforms for discovery, therapeutic evaluation and manufacturing — and how those scientific and collaborative pathways can contribute to improving human health and society.

Bio

April M. Kloxin, Ph.D., is the Director of the Delaware Biotechnology Institute, Associate Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and a Professor in the Departments of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering (joint), and Biomedical Engineering (affiliate) at the University of Delaware (UD), as well as a member of the Breast Cancer Research Program at the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center and Research Institute. She obtained her B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Colorado, Boulder, as a NASA Graduate Student Research Program Fellow, and trained as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her multi-disciplinary group creates unique materials with multiscale property control and applies them in conjunction with other innovative molecular tools for addressing outstanding problems in human health, with a focus on understanding and targeting dynamic cell-microenvironment interactions in wound healing, fibrosis, and cancer and translational systems for manufacturing and delivery of biologics and cell-based therapies. She is a member of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows and recipient of the 2022 Mid-Career Faculty Excellence in Scholarship Award at the University of Delaware, the 2019 Biomaterials Science Lectureship, a 2018 ACS PMSE Arthur K. Doolittle Award, a NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, a Susan G. Komen Foundation Career Catalyst Research award, a NSF CAREER award, and a Pew Scholars in Biomedical Sciences award.

Registration requested: https://forms.gle/S65hQfte6Ht5Ctw67