Biographies of Contributors

Dr. Alisa Isaac is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, Texas. She leads research on innovative biomaterials that harness the body’s own immune response to promote healing and tissue regeneration after injury. Her work has been recognized with national honors, including the University of Texas System Trauma Research and Combat Casualty Care Collaborative Mentored Research Award and the Rising Stars in Engineering Award. Through her research and mentorship, Dr. Isaac aims to advance regenerative medicine solutions that improve recovery from traumatic injuries.Juhi Samalis an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Samal obtained her Ph.D. from the National University of Ireland, Galway and then was a Regeneration Next Postdoctoral Fellow at Duke University. Her laboratory explores the role of glycans in regulating neuroinflammation in acute and chronic central nervous system disorders and using this information to inform the design of engineering material platforms to promote tissue repair.Ana I. Gonçalvesis an Assistant Researcher at the Unit for Multidisciplinary Research in Biomedicine (UMIB) at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS) in the University of Porto, Portugal. She obtained her PhD in Tissue Engineering, Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cells in December 2017, and her research is focused on strategies to study tendon biology and associated pathways that impair healing and regeneration. She co-edited one Book on Tendon Regeneration (Elsevier, 2025). Dr. Gonçalves has been part of numerous European and National projects as core team member and is an active member of International Societies such as TERMIS-EU and EORS.Dr. Christina Bailey-Hytholtis the Leonard P. Kinnicutt Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Her research focuses on engineering human-based in vitro models and designing drug delivery vehicles for prenatal and women’s health. Dr. Bailey-Hytholt has been the recipient of several honors and awards including Forbes’ 30 under 30 in Science (2022), an Extraordinary Women Advancing Healthcare in Massachusetts award from The Women’s Edge (2023), and an American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) 35 under 35 award (2023). Dr. Bailey-Hytholt received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from WPI, earned her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Brown University as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, receiving Brown University’s Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching and School of Engineering Outstanding Thesis Award, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Genomic Medicines and Biologics Drug Product Development at Sanofi.Chao Ma, Ph.D. is an Assistant Staff at the Center for Immunotherapy and Precision Immuno-oncology within the Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute. His original work explores how bone marrow microenvironments contribute to disease progression and treatment resistance and builds up in vitro tools to screen novel CAR T-cell immunotherapies. Dr. Ma holds a B.S. in Biotechnology (2013) and a Ph.D. in Animal Biotechnology (2017) from Northwest A&F University. His laboratory is currently focused on the development and leverage of multidisciplinary approaches that combine engineering with biology and medicine for tissue engineering, disease modeling, and therapy screening.