Stephanie Willerth

Dr. Stephanie Willerth is a principal investigator at the International Collaboration On Repair Discoveries (ICORD) and a member of the Centre for Advanced Materials and Related Technology. She is a full professor and Canada Research Chair in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Victoria where she holds dual appointments in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Division of Medical Sciences. From 2018 to 2021, she served as the acting director of the Centre for Biomedical Research and the Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Program at the University of Victoria. She also previously served as the president of the Canadian Biomaterials Society. She is a staff scientist at Creative Destruction Labs and serves as the CEO of Axolotl Biosciences. 

Dr. Willerth’s research program addresses the challenge and complexities of how to develop engineered tissues for replacing complex organs such as the spinal cord. These complexities include finding how to replace the variety of cell types present in tissue while also achieving the necessary arrangements of these cells. In particular, her work has focused on the use of pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which can differentiate into any type of cell found in the body. Her research group analyzes the behaviour of stem cells inside three-dimensional biomaterial scaffolds with the goal of engineering complex tissues. Her recent efforts have focused on using 3D bioprinting to generate human models of healthy and diseased tissues.