| Abstract Scope |
Engineering physiologically relevant tissue models requires simultaneous control over architecture, scale, cellular composition, and mechanical environment—challenges no single fabrication approach fully resolves. I founded an early-stage, technology-focused startup to translate my lab's hybrid laser printing (HLP) technology, which received an NSF SBIR Phase I award to scale the platform for microfluidic chip and device manufacturing. This venture taught me real-world lessons in market needs, manufacturing constraints, and customer validation, which I brought back to academia to sharpen how I frame and write competitive research grants. This experience, in turn, generated new academic ideas, including artificial capillaries-on-a-chip for modeling tumor angiogenesis, a Bone Multicellular Unit-on-a-Chip (BMU-Chip) for studying bone disorders, and a LEGO-like modular "build-your-own-tissue" manufacturing pipeline for scalable tissue generation. I will discuss this reinforcing feedback loop between the startup and academic worlds, where each experience continually strengthens the other. |