Sharon Gerecht, PhD
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Duke University
Dr. Gerecht is a Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. She is a global expert in vascular and stem cell biology and engineering, including pioneering engineering principles to understand and harness cell fate decisions for therapeutic developments. She and her lab team study how the microenvironment modulates stem cell fate, differentiation, and tissue assembly. These include understanding how various properties of the extracellular matrix modulate cellular responses and how oxygen gradients regulate tissue performance. They develop biomaterials to guide morphogenesis through sequential activation of signaling pathways to form functional tissues and use a range of disease and injury models to delineate these mechanisms in vivo.
Dr. Gerecht is the recipient of the Allan C. Davis Medal from the Maryland Academy of Sciences (2008), the North America Vascular Biology Organization Junior Investigator Award (2009), the Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award from the March of Dimes Foundation (2009-2011), the National Scientist Development Award (2008-2012) and Established Investigator Award (2014-2019) both from the American Heart Association, the National Science Foundation CAREER award (2011-2016), the W.W. Smith Charitable Trust Heart award (2014-2017), and the JHU Inaugural President’s Frontier Award (2015). Dr. Gerecht is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2016), an elected Member of the National Academy of Medicine (2019), and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (2020) and the National Academy of Inventors (2020). She is the author of more than 150 papers, book chapters, and patents in her field.