Elise Morgan

Elise Morgan is the ad interim Dean of Boston University's College of Engineering and holds the Maysarah K. Sukkar Professorship in Engineering Design and Innovation. She is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering with affiliations in Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering. Her research focuses on skeletal mechanobiology, investigating how mechanical signals influence bone and cartilage development, adaptation, and regeneration. Key areas include mechanical stimulation for cartilage formation, spinal fracture biomechanics, and non-invasive diagnostics for fracture healing.

Education: PhD from University of California, Berkeley. She leads the Skeletal Mechanobiology and Biomechanics Lab and directs the Center for Multiscale & Translational Mechanobiology. Awards include the 2018 Dean’s Catalyst Award and 2015 Fellowship in the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Her work bridges engineering mechanics, materials science, and cell biology to address musculoskeletal diseases like osteoporosis and osteoarthritis.

Research highlights include developing data-driven frameworks for vertebral body analysis, autonomous experimentation systems for material discovery, and computational models predicting bone regeneration. Current projects explore geometric determinants of intervertebral disc mechanics and structure-function relationships in ischemic bone. Collaborations span synthetic biology, tissue engineering, and translational mechanobiology.