Our Team
Principal Investigator
Aitor Aguirre, Ph.D.
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Dr. Aguirre obtained his B.S. in Biology and M.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of the Basque Country and his Ph.D. in Material Science and Tissue Engineering at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC). For his postdoctoral training Dr. Aguirre joined The Salk Institute under the supervision of J.C. Izpisua-Belmonte, where he explored in vivo reprogramming applied to cardiac regeneration (Cell Stem Cell, 2014), and made significant contributions to non-coding RNA biology in human development (Cell Stem Cell, 2014; Circulation, 2015). Dr. Aguirre became Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego in 2017 and joined IQ and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Michigan State University one year later. Dr. Aguirre has extensive experience in cardiac development, cardiovascular disease, tissue engineering and CRISPR/Cas9 genetic engineering. Dr. Aguirre has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Gangoiti Barrera Fellowship, the CIBER-BBN award, the Generalitat of Catalunya predoctoral fellowship, the Hispanic Center of Excellence award at the University of California and more recently an NHLBI K01 award.
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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1383-2792Personnel
Amanda Huang, Lab Manager
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Amanda is a research assistant and laboratory manager for the Aguirre lab. She graduated from Michigan State University with a major in Biomedical Laboratory Science and Human Biology.
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Postdocs
Aleksandra Kostina, Ph.D.
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Aleksandra obtained her B.S and M.S. in Embryology and Cell Biology at Saint Petersburg State University and her Ph.D. in Cardiovascular Sciences at the University of Verona. Through her Ph.D. project, she used primary human cells to unravel Notch-dependent molecular mechanisms causing ascending aortic aneurysm and aortic valve calcification. In 2020 she was a part of the team under the supervision of Deepak Srivastava, revealing a therapeutical candidate for heart valve disease (Science, 2020). After completing her Ph.D., she headed several projects funded by Russian Science Foundation and worked in the Institute of Cytology, RAS modeling in vitro cell-cell communications during early osteogenic processes. Aleksandra was a visiting researcher at Karolinska Institute and Humanitas Research Hospital, where she acquired extensive experience working with stem cells and cardiomyocytes. In March 2022, she joined the Aguirre Lab as a postdoctoral researcher. Her project aims to increase the complexity of human heart organoids and model early cardiac developmental events affected by medications taken during pregnancy resulting in embryo heart defects.
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Priyadharshni Muniyandi, Ph.D.
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Priya received her M.S. in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. She then moved to Germany and worked as a researcher at Hannover Medical University, Germany. Priya secured a prestigious Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) fellowship from the Japanese government for her doctoral degree in the lab of Prof. Tatsuro Hanajiri, at Toyo University. Her Ph.D. work focused on developing cell free genetic and epigenetic scaffolds for cardiac repair and regeneration. After completing her Ph.D., she worked at Pandorum Technologies as a research scientist bioengineering liquid cornea and using 3D and 4D printing for liver and lung regeneration. In the Aguirre lab, Priya is working methods to engineer heart valves in vitro using hiPSCs and organoid technologies to model aspects of cardiac valve disease.
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Graduate students
Brett Volmert
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Brett is a Ph.D. candidate in the Aguirre Lab within the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Michigan State University. His research involves the development and advancement of novel in vitro human heart systems using pluripotent stem cells and self-organization. Through Brett's research, these advanced organoid platforms can be utilized for the discovery of novel mechanisms of human heart development and disease and discover pharmacotherapies to regenerate or repair damaged heart tissue. Brett obtained his B.S. in Biomaterials Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Brett is also the recipient of the James Scholar Honors Award and the Academic Achievement Withrow Fellowship Award.
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Colin O'Hern
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Colin is a 3rd year DO/PhD candidate at Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine as part of the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program. He obtained his B.S. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Maryland - Baltimore County in 2018. From 2018-2020, he worked as a laboratory technician in a structural biology lab under the supervision of Dr. Michael F. Summers, Ph.D., eliciting the 3D structure of proteins, RNAs, and protein-RNA complexes involved in HIV replication. Colin’s research interests include translational approaches to tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Currently, he is focused on modeling immune cell populations in both the developing and injured human heart by utilizing immune cells and cardiac organoids derived from pluripotent stem cells. This research aims to provide realistic human heart tissue models that can be used for high throughput testing and analysis for therapeutic development and to uncover novel phenomena about immune cells and their interactions with human heart tissue in developmental and disease states.
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Visiting researchers
Mirel Adrian Popa, PhD
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Mirel is a visiting postdoctoral scholar sponsored by the Fulbright program. He has a PhD in Biology with an specialization in cell biology. His research area focuses on cardiovascular remodeling, tissue regeneration and stem cells. During his research career Mirel has actively participated in national and international research projects, won scholarships and published first author papers. He is proud of being a father and husband and in his free time he enjoys playing with his child all kinds of games, hiking, reading good books and traveling with friends.
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Undergraduate students
Ashlin Riggs (2021-pres)
Sammantha Caywood (2022-pres)
Erin Thomas (2022-pres)
Hussein Basrai (2022-pres)
Haley Lankerd (2022-pres)
Lauren Squire (2022-pres)
Past members
Jesús Ordoño, Visiting Scientist (2018-2019)
Kristen Ball, lab manager (2018-2020)
Manigandan Venkatesan, postdoc researcher (2022)
Yonatan Lewis-Israeli, graduate student (2018-2022)
Mishref Abdelhamid, clinical fellow (2020-2022)
Aaron Wasserman, graduate student (2018-2022)
Lab pictures
Yoni's graduation dinner
Normal day in the lab
