Event

BIOE Seminar: Erika Moore

Friday, September 6, 2019
9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m.
A. James Clark Hall, Room 2132
Emily Rosenthal
301 405 3936
erosent1@umd.edu

Dr. Erika Moore

Assistant Professor

Department of Materials Science and Engineering

University of Florida

Immune-informed biomaterial design

Moore's research group seeks to develop a comprehensive understanding of how immunology influences tissue regeneration. The first part of her talk will focus on on manipulating macrophages to enhance vessel development in tissue engineered scaffolds. Moore's group's current work is focused on understanding the roles of innate and adaptive immunity in in tissue regeneration following injury. Specifically, the group is assessing the roles of monocytes and B cells by implanting either a biomaterial known to skew the immune response towards a Th2 phenotype, promoting tissue healing, or a biomaterial known to skew towards a Th17 phenotype, promoting fibrosis. After sorting monocytes and B cells from multiple organs, they conduct single cell analysis to uncover new populations of monocytes and B cells in each of the biomaterial conditions. This work generates enhanced comprehension of how biomaterials skew the immune state and how the immune cells regulate tissue regeneration in the context of biomaterials.

About the Speaker

Erika Moore is the inaugural Rhines Rising Star Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Florida. She defended her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University in May of 2018. She earned her undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Erika’s work broadly focuses on understanding how immune cells can be leveraged to enhance tissue regeneration. Under the guidance of Dr. Jennifer L. West at Duke University, Erika’s thesis focused on the use of macrophages, innate immune cells, to support vascularized engineered tissue. This work has been published in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering, Advanced Biosystems and Regenerative Engineering and Translational Medicine. Erika was also awarded the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation from the Duke University department of biomedical engineering for this work. Erika currently works as a visiting assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University in the department of biomedical engineering. Her current work, in collaboration with Dr. Jennifer Elisseeff, focuses on the roles of B cells, adaptive immune cells, during biomaterial-mediated healing. Ongoing research efforts seek to develop materials capable of directing immune cells towards desired clinical outcomes. Erika is a former Trustee on the Duke Board of Trustees. She has been awarded the NSF Graduate Fellowship, the Ford Foundation Fellowship, as well as the Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellowship from Johns Hopkins University.