The award supports Schulman’s efforts to create a programmable language for biomaterials that instructs and coordinates tissue growth in lab-grown organs suitable for transplant.

Rebecca Schulman, associate professor in the Whiting School of Engineering’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and core researcher at the Institute for NanoBioTechnology, is a recipient of a National Science Foundation Trailblazer Engineering Impact Award. The three-year, $3 million award supports high-risk, high-reward novel research projects that creatively address major societal challenges, advance U.S. leadership, and merge engineering and science fields.

On average, over 100,000 people in the United States are on an organ transplant waiting list, but only 40,000 organs will become available. Schulman will use support from the award to address this critical shortage by developing a programmable language for biomaterials that can bring us closer to making laboratory-grown organs and tissues feasible.

Schulman’s project combines synthetic biology and computer programming to design molecular programming languages, which are then embedded in a scaffold where it will instruct cells to grow and mature. Because kidneys are the most in-demand organ—accounting for more than 80% of the waiting list—Schulman’s project will focus primarily on kidney development. She hopes the new tool can help address long standing roadblocks in organ development.

“Growing an organ or tissue from a single cell to a functioning structure suitable for transplant is a complicated and long process, to say plainly,” said Schulman. “A programming language is needed to read the surrounding environment to give instructions to many cell development processes at precise times and under the right conditions.”

Schulman and her team hope their research can be used as a framework for other organ and tissue development.

“This work shows how fundamental engineering research, interdisciplinary coordination, and creativity can provide new directions to overcome longstanding health and technology challenges. I am also grateful to the Hopkins research community, where deep expertise in different areas can come together in a collegial spirit to form the teams needed for these challenges.”