Team

Principal Investigator

Mai T. Ngo, Ph.D. (she/her)

Richard H. Soit Assistant Professor

Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Member, University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center

Member, Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center

Trainer, Biotechnology Training Program

CV | Google Scholar | LinkedIn | Email

Professor Ngo joined CBE in August 2024 as an assistant professor. Previously, she was an NIH NRSA postdoctoral fellow at Boston University. Under the mentorship of Professor Christopher Chen, she utilized tissue engineering and cell engineering tools to build vascularized tissues by controlling paracrine signaling. Previously, Professor Ngo obtained her Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. As a member of Professor Brendan Harley’s lab, she developed vascularized tissue models of brain cancer. During graduate school, she was an Illinois Distinguished Fellow and a NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Her research has been recognized by several awards, such as the BMES Career Development Award and the CMBE Graduate Student Shooting Star Award; additionally, she has been recognized as a University of Washington DYSS seminar speaker and as a MIT ChemE Rising Star. Professor Ngo received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Virginia Tech.

Graduate Students

Sarah Jenison (CBE)

2025 – 2026 PPG Fellow

B.S. Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (2024)

Email: sjenison@wisc.edu

Project Areas: Developing engineered tissue models to investigate how therapeutic modalities such as chemotherapy and radiation can alter the extracellular matrix and tumor microenvironment to facilitate breast-to-brain metastasis

Christine Stark (CBE)

BTP T32 Fellow

B.S. Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, North Carolina State University (2024)

Email: cstark5@wisc.edu

Project Areas: Engineering cell communication to direct neurovascular regeneration for stroke recovery

Tiana Bish (CBE)

B.S. Chemical Engineering, University of Kansas (2024)

Email: tbish@wisc.edu

Project Areas: Developing hydrogel models of the brain to study tumor cell growth, dynamic biomaterials for controlling blood and lymphatic vasculature, and injectable, pre-vascularized cryogels for tissue regeneration