Professor Kelly Stevens earned a $29 million grant from ARPA-H to further her bioprinting human liver tissue research with collaborators at Carnegie Mellon. Read more on her bioprinting research.

BioE Team Delivers New Insights to Fight Heart Disease
A team of BioE faculty, led by Professor Jennifer Davis, were able to shut down a signaling pathway known to promote scarring in the heart caused by dilated cardiomyopathy. The study was published in Science. Davis was also recently named director of UW’s Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine. Read more about the Science paper.

Platform Bridges Gap to Human Brain Therapies
A new research platform developed by Professor Azadeh Yazdan is helping scientists control and monitor brain activity with light over long periods of time. By making this platform accessible to other labs, she and her team hope to accelerate the treatment and cure of the most complex diseases of the human brain. Read more about her work.

AI Technique ‘shows its work’
Using a “highly explainable” machine learning technique to predict the outcomes of atrial fibrillation treatment, a UW team is giving doctors and patients a new tool in treating a leading cause of strokes and heart failure. The team was led by Professor Patrick Boyle, and the work was published in Nature Communications Medicine. Read why explainability is crucial to AI-based healthcare tools.

Fighting Blood Clots
Professor Gianluca Interlandi and his team showed that the molecular structure of the drug lumacaftor, which is currently used to treat cystic fibrosis, may be used to design a treatment that would inhibit the function of a blood protein and discourage dangerous clots. Read more on the research.

Student-athlete Champions
Seniors in Bioengineering Avery Nguyen and Conner Leber had amazing seasons as part of UW’s Women’s and Men’s Soccer teams. The women won their first Big Ten Tournament title and advanced to the NCAA quarterfinals, and the men won their first National Championship. Read more about their tremendous 2025 campaigns.

Spelman Fund Launched
Family, friends, and colleagues celebrated Professor “Sandy” Francis Spelman with a new endowment fund, which will provide broad-based support for masters and PhD students – including tuition, stipends, and benefits – in Bioengineering at UW. Read more about Spelman’s legacy and “unbridled joy.”

From Capstone to CTO
Alumnus Nishant Velagapudi shared his experience at an AI-based medtech company with 2025 capstone students last fall. Read more on Velagapudi’s “bioengineering mindset” that Professor Christopher Neils helped him refine.

An external evaluation team from ABET – the organization that accredits university programs in applied science, computing, and engineering – issued a report with no findings for UW Bioengineering. This is the most-favorable outcome available for the evaluation, which takes place every six years.

“This is the first time in our program’s history that we passed unconditionally with no repeat visits or additional documentation needed,” said Department Chair Princess Imoukhuede. “That saves tens of thousands of dollars in follow-up fees and faculty and staff time that would have been redirected to accreditation documentation.”

“Evaluators recognized our strong industry connections and highlighted our department as a model for how to connect students to industry. Such a positive evaluation reaffirms our leadership across our discipline and reflects the expertise and consistent effort across our department.”

The department’s Bioengineering Transformation Blueprint guides our progress, and the strategy it captures was integral to our successful ABET evaluation.

Read UW Bioengineering’s Winter 2026 Impact Report and Transformation Blueprint.

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Gregorio NE, et al., Baker D, DeForest CA and UW Department of Chemical Engineering and Institute for Stem Cell & Regenerative Medicine. Stimuli-triggered formation of de novo-designed protein biomaterials. Cell Biomaterials. 2025;2:100239. doi:10.1016/j.celbio.2025.100239

Yingye Fang, P.I. Imoukhuede. From “high” to “how many”: How quantifying receptor abundance links genotype, environment, and therapeutic response. Current Opinion in Biomedical Engineering. 2026;37:100646. doi.org/10.1016/j.cobme.2025.100646.

Song K, Nguyen DC, Wang Y, Jokonya S, Yazdani O, Sellers DL, Stayton PS, Pun SH. Peptide vaccine formulations with structurally distinct STING agonist drugamers induce discrete, efficacious antitumor responses. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2025 Nov 11;122(45):e2409978122. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2409978122. Epub 2025 Nov 3. PMID: 41183196; PMCID: PMC12626017.

Zholudeva LV, et al., Sakiyama-Elbert S. Beyond Transplantation: Engineering Neural Cell Therapies and Combination Strategies for Spinal Cord Repair. Brain Sci. 2026 Jan 21;16(1):113. doi: 10.3390/brainsci16010113. PMID: 41594834; PMCID: PMC12838813.

Wenting Yang, et al., Patrick S. Stayton. Combinatorial Discovery of RAFT Cationic Polymers for mRNA Delivery: Structure–Function Insights from High-Throughput Screening and Machine Learning. Biomacromolecules. 2025 26(11):7724. doi.org/10.1021/acs.biomac.5c01236.

Tian R. Interaction of PGC-1? and GDF15 in the stressed heart. Nat Cardiovasc Res. 2025 Oct;4(10):1216-1218. doi: 10.1038/s44161-025-00729-8. PMID: 41006918.