Stephanie Seidlits

Dr. Seidlits is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at UT Austin. She obtained a B.S. in Bioengineering from Rice University and went on to receive M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Biomedical Engineering from the University Texas at Austin. She then trained as an NIH NRSA F32 post-doctoral fellow in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. She has been honored with an NSF CAREER Award (2017), Society for Biomaterials Young Investigator Award (2019), Biomedical Engineering Society Young Innovator in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Award (2019), a Biomedical Engineering Society Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Rising Star Award (2019), and a Bioengineering Institute of California Shu Chien Early Career Lecturer Award (2020). 

Focused at the interface of engineering, neuroscience and medicine, the Seidlits lab seeks to develop clinical therapies for injury and disorders of the central nervous system (CNS), including spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury and brain cancers. Using biomaterial microenvironments, my research aims to identify differences b­­­­etween the extracellular environment of diseased and healthy or developing and adult CNS tissues and exploit these mechanistic discoveries to develop novel therapies that target the local environment. Engineered microenvironments enable ex vivo investigation of key physiological players within conditions approximating those in vivo so that physiologically relevant data can be obtained in a simplified context. Ultimately, this approach enables development of new therapeutic strategies based on controlled manipulation of these players. The long-term goal of my research is to use biomaterial microenvironments to create new therapies.