From 3D-printing and energy to rocket science and biotechnology, I’ve been fortunate to chase curiosity and work on meaningful projects along my educational journey. Having studied Materials Science and Engineering Bachelor’s followed by a Computer Science Master’s at Stanford University, I’m thrilled that this Bioengineering PhD in the joint University of California, Berkeley-San Francisco is now a culmination of the knowledge and skills I’ve gained throughout.

As I near the final years of my PhD, I would be honored to debut my interdisciplinary research on 4D-bioprinting at an international stage like the Hong Kong Laureate Forum (HKLF). I have always been passionate about scientific communication and outreach, and the HKLF would provide a meaningful experience for me to exchange ideas with bright students from Hong Kong and around the world.

My desire to serve as a global ambassador for science also motivates me to learn multiple languages and cultures. As such, I would love to discover unique postdoctoral roles or career options in Hong Kong as I strive towards my dream of becoming a professor. As such, I would love to participate in the 2025 HKLF, where I will wholeheartedly contribute to intellectual discourse that inspires curiosity, empathy, and innovation.

University of California, Berkeley & San Francisco (Joint Graduate Program in Bioengineering)

To construct tissues at scale and address the global organ shortage crisis, 3D-bioprinting presents an attractive opportunity to enable biomaterials design with patient-specific personalization and high throughput. Printing cells, however, adds another dimension of time following spatial positioning in 3D, as living cells will quickly migrate and reorganize into preferential patterns. Coined ‘4D-bioprinting’, the ability of fabricated biomaterials to autonomously change shape over time is a feature that can be leveraged to facilitate their transformation into complex geometric structures.

As such, my PhD research focuses on using artificial intelligence (AI) to program 4D-bioprinted functional tissue via cellular self-organization. I am thus building a closed-loop bioprinting system, where I have installed a camera on a custom, low-cost bioprinter to ensure highly precise extrusion of cellular inks into granular microgel baths. The novelty of my work lies in utilizing computer vision with real-time video monitoring to precisely pattern cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interfaces (<70µm resolution) while correcting for over/under-extrusion defects.

Evidently, 4D-bioprinting pushes the boundaries of resolution while maintaining spatiotemporal control of tissue development. Ultimately, this ability to direct the trajectory of morphogenesis for human stem cell-derived organoids will lead to reproducible tissue models for drug discovery, disease modeling, and regenerative medicine.