معرفی
Ryan Stowers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), with an affiliation in Bioengineering. His research focuses on mechanobiology, specifically how cellular behavior is influenced by the mechanical properties of their microenvironment. He engineers novel biomaterials, such as tunable hydrogels, to study stem cell differentiation, cancer progression, and epigenetic regulation. His work integrates mechanical engineering, materials science, and cell biology to develop platforms for disease modeling and regenerative medicine.
Education: PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin (2014), BS in Bioengineering from Clemson University (2009). Postdoctoral training at Stanford University (2015–2019).
Research interests include: (1) Mechanotransduction pathways in cancer and stem cells, (2) Design of stimuli-responsive hydrogels for controlled microenvironments, (3) ECM-epigenome interactions, and (4) 3D cell culture systems for disease modeling. His lab’s hydrogel platforms enable spatiotemporal control of matrix properties to study cellular responses.
Awards: Hellman Faculty Fellowship, Breast Cancer Alliance Young Investigator Award, and Regents’ Junior Faculty Fellowship. His work has been published in high-impact journals such as Nature Biomedical Engineering and Nature Communications.
Grants & Advising: Supervises PhD students in Mechanical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Molecular Biology. Collaborates on grants exploring hydrogel applications in cancer and stem cell research. Lab members include postdocs and graduate students working on biomaterial design and cellular mechanisms.
Labs/Teams: Stowers Lab (UCSB) focuses on engineering biomaterials to study mechanobiological processes. The lab develops hydrogels for 3D culture systems and investigates how matrix properties regulate cell fate decisions.
