Five U of T Engineering professors and alumni have been honoured by the Ontario Society of Professional Engineers (OSPE) and Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) with Ontario Professional Engineers Awards. Among the winners is Professor Milica Radisic (IBBME, ChemE) who received the Research and Development Medal, for engineers who have advanced knowledge in engineering or applied science.
Radisic is an international leader in cardiac tissue engineering, building living heart tissue using stem cells and biomaterials. A 2011 recipient of the Ontario Professional Engineers Young Engineer Medal, she was the first to use electrical field stimulation to enable assembly of individual heart cells into functional and differentiated cardiac tissue. She also tackled the field’s hardest problem — immaturity of stem-cell-derived heart cells — maturing these cells to unprecedented levels with electro-stimulation. Radisic’s heart-on-a-chip technology has been developed commercially through her company, TARA Biosystems, and is already impacting the drug discovery process in partnership with pharma companies. In addition, her heart tissues are revolutionizing patient therapy: with cardiologists, she is using stem cells derived from adult and pediatric patients with arrhythmia and cardiomyopathy to build personalized heart tissues. Through sophisticated molecular analysis, her team is delineating the physiology of disease and tailoring drug personalized therapies.
To read all of U of T Engineering’s OSPE award winners this year, click HERE.