The Immunomodulatory and Biomimetic Materials (IMBM) Lab develops material-based technologies to address critical health challenges and enable advanced bioengineering models. Our approach involves the rational design of supramolecular synthetic materials composed of naturally occurring building blocks (such as peptides, sugars, and lipids) that can interact with biological systems and create modular microenvironments. We employ a multi-scale strategy, spanning from molecular design to control nanostructure and bulk material properties, ultimately influencing the biological response to our materials.

Bruce Walker’s research focuses on mechanisms of immune control in chronic infection, focusing in particular on persons who control HIV infection spontaneously without the need for medication. The focus of the Walker Lab includes mechanisms of action of cytotoxic T cells, and mechanisms of T cell dysfunction using blood and lymph node samples collected from infected persons. The laboratory also focuses on hyperacute HIV infection through a collaboration in KwaZulu Natal South Africa where Dr. Walker helped build research capacity.  

A major focus of the Langer Lab is the study and development of polymers to deliver drugs, particularly genetically engineered proteins and DNA, continuously at controlled rates for prolonged periods of time. Our interest in drug delivery systems has extended to selective drug or substance removal systems that may circumvent toxicity. 

The human microbiome is remarkably personalized—even people living together harbor distinct microbial communities. On the skin, individuals in a family often share the same species yet harbor distinct but dynamic strain-level communities. This personalization may explain why most microbiome therapies fail to consistently engraft across patients. The Lieberman Lab seeks to understand how ecology and evolution shape these personalized communities, and the role of this personalization on human health. 

The Chakraborty Lab is focused on understanding the mechanisms underlying how the immune system functions. This basic knowledge can then be harnessed for the design of better strategies to cure and prevent disease. The lab is also interested in transcriptional condensates. Arup Chakraborty’s work represents a crossroad of the physical, computational and life sciences. A hallmark of his research is the close synergy and collaboration between his lab’s theoretical and computational studies and investigations led by experimental biologists and clinicians.

The Bhatia Laboratory engineers micro and nanotechnologies, also called “tiny technologies,” to address complex challenges in human health ranging from cancer to liver disease and acquired infections. Operating at the interface of living and synthetic systems, the Bhatia group uses these miniaturization tools to improve areas of medicine including diagnostics, drug delivery, tissue regeneration, and disease modeling.

James Collins's research focuses on synthetic biology and systems biology, with a particular focus on using network biology approaches to study antibiotic action, bacterial defense mechanisms, and the emergence of resistance. The Collins Lab has has created genetic toggle switches, RNA switches, programmable cells, genetic counters, genetic timers, kill switches for microbes, engineered bacteriophage to combat bacterial infections, and tunable mammalian genetic switches, each with broad applications in medicine and biotechnology. They have also shown that deep learning approaches can be used to discover and design novel antibiotics for treating resistant bacterial infections.

Professor Gehrke’s research interests center on molecular aspects of host-pathogen interactions and on the pathogenesis of RNA viruses. Current experimental work focuses on understanding how viruses that are closely related in genetic sequence cause highly variable disease outcomes. Examples include Zika virus, which is correlated with birth defects including microcephaly, as well as dengue fever virus, which is in most cases a self-limited disease that does not cause congenital abnormalities. Cerebral organoids grown from human embryonic stem cells or human induced pluripotent stems cells closely mimic the human brain and serve as models for defining virus tropisms (which cells are infected) and subsequent effects on cell growth or cell death. Collaborative work with other IMES faculty permits three-dimensional imaging of virus infections, and single cell sequence analysis distinguishes transcriptional profiles in infected and uninfected cells.

The interdisciplinary research in the Shalek Lab aims to create and implement new approaches to elucidate cellular and molecular features that inform tissue-level function and dysfunction across the spectrum of human health and disease. Professor Shalek’s research encompasses both the development of broadly enabling technologies as well as their application to characterize, model, and rationally control complex multicellular systems. Current studies with partners around the world seek to methodically dissect human disease to understand links between cellular features and clinical observations, including how: immune cells coordinate balanced responses to environmental changes with tissue-resident cells; host cell-pathogen interactions evolve across time and tissues during pathogenic infection; and, tumor cells evade homeostatic immune activity.