BRITE Fellow: Intelligent Nanoscale 3D Biomanufacturing for Human-on-a-Chip

This Boosting Research Ideas for Transformative and Equitable Advances in Engineering (BRITE) Fellow grant will provide a transformative nanoscale biomanufacturing platform powered by artificial intelligence. At the convergence of advanced additive manufacturing, stem cell biology, biomaterials, and biomechanics, biomanufacturing has the potential for creating three-dimensional biomimetic tissue constructs that can not only redefine the clinical capabilities of regenerative medicine but also transform the toolsets available for various applications such as disease modeling, pre-clinical drug screening, space exploratory and deep ocean studies with human-like tissues, and environmental health and safety studies using engineered human tissues.

However, current biomanufacturing technologies have critical bottlenecks: a) they lack the resolution to resolve single cells and are too slow for fabricating a functional three-dimensional human tissues and organs, b) they are often conducted by trial and error, resulting in wasting expensive cells, biomaterials, and time, and c) the lack of systemic interactions with other tissues or organs at the human systemic level. This project aims to address fundamental research issues related to these bottlenecks.

On the education side, a comprehensive equity, diversity, and inclusion plan will be developed. Graduate student researchers, undergraduate interns, and K-12 students from diverse backgrounds will have the opportunity to participate in this exciting research project and other outreach programs. As an eminent leader, the principal investigator is poised to make long lasting societal, educational, and commercial impacts on advanced manufacturing and nanoengineering.

The research objectives of the project are to investigate ultrafast, near-field optics for nanoscale control of photo-polymerization in three-dimensional bioprinting, to investigate the machine learning methods for three-dimensional bioprinting, and to study the biomechanics and tissue functions of the bioprinted human-on-a-chip. To achieve these objectives, both theoretical and experimental investigations will be carried out to understand the nanoscale light control for bioprinting.

Machine learning methods will be investigated for optimal control of the three-dimensional bioprinting process. The biomechanics issues and tissue functions in the human-on-a-chip will be studied. This will be the first attempt in the field to explore ultrafast near-field optics for bioprinting with nanoscale resolution.

This research on machine learning methods is also quite novel, particularly for bioprinting so that traditional trial and error optimization will no longer be needed. Furthermore, the human-on-a-chip integrating major tissues such as heart, liver, lung, kidney in the microfluidic system will be an enabling platform for various applications. By integrating the emerging disruptive technologies in the multidisciplinary domains of biomanufacturing, artificial intelligence, and nanophotonics, this research supports exceptionally innovative, high risk, original, and unconventional research projects that have the potential to create new paradigms in advanced manufacturing.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.