Rena Bizios

Rena Bizios is the Lutcher Brown Endowed Chair Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at University of Texas at San Antonio. Her areas of research interest include Cellular and Tissue Engineering, tissue regeneration, biomaterials (including nanostructured ones), mechanisms of cellular responses to stimuli (chemical, mechanical, magnetic, electrical), and biocompatibility (specifically, cell/biomaterial interactions). Her areas of teaching interest are tissue-biomaterial interactions; cellular engineering; tissue engineering; and biocompatibility.

The research in Bizios's lab is focused on novel approaches to tissue regeneration for tissue engineering and other biomedical applications. Lab endeavors include the modification of material surfaces with immobilized, bioactive compounds such as select adhesive peptides; micropatterning of material surfaces in order to direct and control subsequent adhesion of specific cell lines in designated domains; and novel material formulations with unique biocompatibility and/or improved mechanical and electrical properties.

Bizios was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2022 "For contributions to the theory and applications of cellular tissue engineering, cell/biomaterial interactions, and surface modification biomaterials."

She received her B.S. from the University of Massachusetts, her M.S. from the California Institute of Technology, and Ph.D., from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.