Selected by the Metallurgy and Materials Society of CIM as one of their Women of Innovation: The Influence of Leading Canadian Female Engineers. My biography will be featured as part of a published book.

Woman of Innovation

I was selected by the Ontario Chair for Women in Science and Engineering to participate in their Inspire: Women Bringing Technology to Medicine feature on their website site.

Women Bringing Technology to Medicine

I received an international travel award from the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries to support my sabbatical during the Fall of 2016 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

ICORD International Travel Award

I was named a Young Innovator in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering by the Biomedical Engineering Society and I was the only researcher at a Canadian University to receive this prestigious honor.

Young Innovator in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering

I was honored by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry based their member's evaluation of one my research presentations.

American Association for Clinical Chemistry – Outstanding Speaker Award

University of Victoria – Faculty of Engineering Award for Excellence in Teaching

Department of Biochemistry  University of British Columbia

Wisconsin Institute for Discovery

Dr. Stephanie Willerth is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Canada Research Chair of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Victoria. During 2017, she served as the acting director of the Centre for Biomedical Research and as the president of the Canadian Biomaterials Society. Her honors include being named a being a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholar, Woman of Innovation in 2017, one of the 2015 Young Innovators in Cellular and Biological Engineering, and a star in Global Health by Grand Challenges Canada in 2014. She spent Fall of 2016 on sabbatical at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery supported by the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries (ICORD) International Travel Award where she wrote her book Engineering Neural Tissue Using Stem Cells published by Academic Press. She completed her postdoctoral work at the University of California-Berkeley after receiving her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Washington University. Her undergraduate degrees were in biology and chemical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

When cells are transplanted into the harsh environment of injured tissue, very few survive. Dr. Willerth’s research works to make scaffolds that can increase the survival of these cells. The biomaterial scaffolds can be used in combination with stem cell therapies as a potential strategy for regeneration and improving functional recovery. Dr. Willerth enjoys working at ICORD because it enables her to work with a variety of scientists, each with their own unique perspective on how to address the challenges associated with SCI. Her lab is located in the University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine campus on Vancouver Island, where she shares space with other biomedical researchers, facilitating, in her words, real interdisciplinary research.

Stem Cells

Biomaterials

Drug Delivery Systems

Tissue Engineering

Neuroscience

Biomedical Engineering

Feature as part of the I am Biomedical series

Press release on collaboration with Aspect Biosystems

Feature on ICORD blog

Professor and Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Engineering

Watch on LabRoots at: http://labroots.com/user/webinars/details/id/206
The Willerth lab investigates how to engineer neural tissue by combining pluripotent stem cells, controlled drug delivery and biomaterial scaffolds. When generating these replacement tissues, we use both embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells as these cells can become any cell type found in the body, including those cells found in the nervous system. Our recent projects have used human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs), which are adult cells reprogrammed back into an embryonic stem cell-like state, leading to the possibility of generating patient specific pluripotent stem cell lines with a reduced risk of immune rejection post transplantation. Recent work suggests that these hiPSC lines show a decreased risk of tumor formation compared to traditional embryonic stem cells, further enhancing their clinical relevance. To generate neural tissue, we seed these cells into different types of drug releasing scaffolds. These novel biomaterial scaffolds direct the stem cells to form functional neural tissue by delivering appropriate chemical and physical signals.  Once we fully understand how to engineer neural tissue from stem cells, we can then apply these principles to produce other tissues found in the body.

Stephanie Willerth - Engineering reproducible neural tissue from pluripotent stem cells

Dr. Stephanie Willerth is a biomedical engineer and a professor at the University of Victoria. In this video she explains her research on embryonic stem cells, studying their behavior to learn how to create replacement organs for those that are diseased and damaged. She also describes the excitement of the students she teaches.

If you are experiencing problems with the audio in this video, go to http://youtu.be/b42bBJUFEmM.

Learn more at http://www.uvic.ca/research

Watch more profiles: http://bit.ly/uvicresearchprofiles

University of Victoria:
http://www.uvic.ca/

University of Victoria's Channel on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/UVic

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