Details
Tommy Pashuck, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
University of Florida
Abstract: Hydrogels are a promising class of biomaterials that can be tailored to mimic human tissues to model them in vitro and for therapeutic applications in vivo. Tuning the properties of hydrogels is often done by modifying the structure of the polymer network to modulate the viscoelastic properties, or by functionalizing the hydrogel with peptides to improve the bioactivity of the gel. Peptides have the added benefit that they are natural substrates for cell-secreted enzymes, and which enables hydrogels to be dynamically modified by the encapsulated cells. The Pashuck Lab has developed novel approaches to control dynamic cell-matrix interactions through both the improved characterization of hydrogels during culture and by tuning the molecular structure of the gels to understand the significance of different design parameters. The goal of this work is to improve our understanding of how cell-matrix interactions guide fundamental processes including endothelial network formation and stem cell differentiation. These platforms are building towards our goal of making biomaterials that more closely recapitulate the complex environments found in native tissues.
Bio: Tommy Pashuck was born and raised in Orlando, Florida and received a BS in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Florida. He received a PhD, also in Materials Science and Engineering, from Northwestern University before moving to the UK to join the lab of Molly Stevens at Imperial College, London on a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship. He worked at the New Jersey Center for Biomaterials before starting a lab in the Bioengineering Department at Lehigh University in 2018, and joined the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Florida in the summer of 2026.