Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, Ph.D.

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic is a bioengineer appointed University Professor, the highest academic rank at Columbia University, as the first ever engineer to receive this distinction. Her laboratory is studying human tissues — including heart, lung, bone, bone marrow and vasculature, that are engineered by bioreactor cultivation of stem cells on biomaterial scaffolds. After being matured to achieve adult-like functionality, these tissues are used as models of injury and disease, across scales — from micro-sized “organs-on-chip” platforms to whole organs. Tissue engineering studies from Gordana’s lab were reported in 480 peer-reviewed journal articles and resulted in five startup companies. Their particular interest is an individualized organs-on-chip model of cancer metastasis with cognate metastatic target tissues linked by vascular perfusion containing circulating cancer cells. As a Chan Zuckerberg investigator in the New York hub, she is studying dynamic interactions of immune cells and metastatic cancer cells in bioengineering models her lab has developed.