UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences will welcome two leading researchers to Penn State this fall as part of its Distinguished Lectures in Life Science series, with talks covering advances in regenerative medicine and the emerging science of nanoplastics exposure.
Free and open to the Penn State community, the series is designed to reflect the University’s commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration, scientific excellence and meaningful dialogue, with each installment offering a window into cutting-edge research while encouraging the next generation of scientific leaders. Hosted by the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, the lecture series brings distinguished speakers to campus whose work spans a wide range of disciplines, from molecular and cellular biology to ecology, genomics and translational science. The public lectures are intended to give Penn State students, faculty and community members a chance to engage directly with researchers at the forefront of their fields and consider how that work shapes the broader world.
This semester’s lineup began with Qing Nie, of the University of California, Irvine, who spoke on reconstructing spatial and temporal patterns of cellular development from single-cell omics data, and continued with Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London, who explored the surprising cognitive abilities of bees in a talk titled “The Mind of a Bee.” The series now turns to two more speakers this fall, with talks on bioengineered hydrogels and the health effects of nanoplastics.
Both of the upcoming lectures will take place in 102 Animal, Veterinary, and Biomedical Sciences Building at University Park, with pre-lecture refreshments beginning at 3:30 p.m.
'Bioengineered Hydrogels for Regenerative Medicine'
- Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 4 p.m.
- Speaker: Andres J. Garcia, executive director, Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience; The Petit Director's Chair in Bioengineering and Bioscience; Regents' Professor, George Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Tech
García will discuss his work engineering synthetic hydrogels — highly hydrated, cross-linked polymer networks — that mimic the extracellular matrices found in the body. His lab has used these materials to direct the growth of human stem cell-derived intestinal organoids, promote wound repair and deliver immune-modulating proteins that help the body accept transplanted pancreatic islet cells in models of Type 1 diabetes. Garcia will also describe new hydrogel-based microfluidic platforms built from human organoids to study interactions between the immune and digestive systems.
Garcia is executive director of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience and a Regents’ professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research sits at the intersection of engineering, materials science and cell biology, producing biomaterial platforms that guide tissue repair and generate new insight into the mechanics of cell behavior. He has founded several startup companies based on his research and has received numerous honors, including the Founders Award from the Society for Biomaterials and the International Award from the European Society for Biomaterials. García is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he served as president of the Society for Biomaterials in 2018-19.
'Minding the Nanoplastics'
- Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 4 p.m.
- Speaker: Matthew Campen, director, New Mexico Center for Metals in Biology and Medicine; Regents' Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of New Mexico
Campen’s talk, "Minding the Nanoplastics: Bringing the Worlds of Environmental Science and Toxicology Together to Better Understand an Emerging Global Exposure," will examine nanoplastics — plastic particles smaller than 100 nanometers in at least one dimension — and recent efforts to measure their concentration in human tissue. He will present findings showing that highly crystalline plastics, including polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate and polypropylene, break down into nanocrystalline particles consistent with those detected in the human body, and will discuss what that means for human health research going forward.
Campen is a distinguished professor and toxicologist at the University of New Mexico College of Pharmacy. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Virginia Tech and a doctoral degree in environmental science and engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and he completed postdoctoral training in pulmonary physiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. His research explores how inhaled particles and pollutants enter the body and trigger changes linked to respiratory, cardiovascular and neurological disease, combining laboratory work with clinical and community research. His recent studies have helped reveal molecular pathways connecting air pollution and microplastics exposure to brain and vascular health.