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