Adventures in cellular herding: understanding and engineering living tissues

Daniel J. Cohen is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University, and the Director of Graduate Studies for the new Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute. He trained first in Mechanical Engineering at Princeton, followed by a joint Ph.D. in Bioengineering at UC Berkeley/UCSF, training at the Physiology Course at the MBL at Woods Hole, and a Life Sciences Research Foundation Fellowship at Stanford University. He arrived at Princeton in the spring of 2018 and his work has been awarded with an NIH Early Career MIRA award and an NSF CAREER award. His works spans dinosaur and organismal mechanics, tissue engineering, biomaterials and medical devices, bio-electromechanics, and history of science. Outside the laboratory, he is a professional storyteller and is heavily engaged in science communication, through theatrical performances for the public in New York and the yearly, week-long Lab Tales workshop at Princeton to train researchers in the hidden histories and human stories behind modern scientific research.