Welcome to the Tissue Injury & Mortality Engineering Lab! The TIME Lab operates at the interface of aging biology and tissue engineering to develop strategies to give everyone 100 Healthy Years.

Chronic aging associated disease (AAD) is the defining medical challenge of our time, representing 95% of direct health costs for seniors and driving expected Medicare spending to over $1.2 trillion by 2024. While no single pathway can explain all changes that occur with aging, there is repeated failure of homeostasis on the tissue-scale, that is, a shift in the balance of degradation and replacement of cellular or matrix components. Unfortunately, significant gaps in research tools and aging models have driven current research to focus on extrema and end-cases, rather than the subtle markers of emerging disease. In many cases, animal models have physiology that is poorly matched to human aging and genetic models of AAD often present key differences in progression. Human in vitro models have been invaluable at elucidating detailed molecular pathways, however, these models often lack context given by tissue-scale and systemic cues. The overall goal of our research is to pioneer a class of in vitro models that match the scale and complexity of AAD but are tractable for routine use throughout aging research and other fields.