Weining Bian, MS

I studied the role of structure factors on initiation of reentrant arrhythmias in patterned monolayer cultures of cardiac cells in my previous master thesis project conducted in the Cardiac Bioelectric Systems lab at Johns Hopkins University.

I joined Bursac's group at Duke for Ph.D. study. My future research will focus on design and optimization of a novel multilayer culture system using a cell/gel micropatterning approach, which provides an engineered 3D tissue microenvironment for cell alignment and growth that is expected to promote maintenance of native cardiac phenotype in vitro. Systematical studies on gene and protein expression, cell morphology, tissue architecture and electrophysiological properties will be conducted on this novel culture system in comparison with the common 2D monolayer cultures. Computational simulations will also be carried out to interpret experimental results.

wb9@duke.edu