Mohammad Fazle Alam, PhD, started March 8, 2023, and will lead the 3D Bioprinting Laboratory on campus.

Dr. Alam, a research scientist in the Department of Biomedical Sciences, received master’s and doctoral degrees in biotechnology from Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, India. He has been a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, since 2018. His primary research focus there was on the synthesis of vascular microtissue and disease modeling.

The 3D Bioprinting Laboratory allows researchers to develop three-dimensional organ-like structures using living cells that can be used for studies in which using actual organs would be difficult.

“Dr. Alam brings several years of experience printing 3D tissues for research,” says Ramaswamy Kalyanasundaram, PhD, head of the Department of Biomedical Sciences. “We are looking forward to getting the 3D Bioprinting Laboratory operating to support the needs of our many researchers under his direction.”

The REGENHU bioprinter, one of only a few of its kind in the US, uses bioinks made with living cells to construct tissues that can be used in new drug development and regenerative medicine. Funding for the 3D Bioprinting Laboratory came from the Blazer Foundation of Rockford.