Vinay Abhyankar

Collagen fibers in the native tissue form complex alignment patterns critical in guiding cell migration. While uniformly aligned fibers are known to facilitate migration through a process called contact guidance, the extracellular matrix (ECM) also contains spatial gradients in fiber alignment created by cell-generated traction forces. Although graded biophysical cell guidance cues such as soluble factors and stiffness are well-studied, the effect of graded alignment on cell migration remains largely unexplored. In this seminar, I will present a microfluidic biofabrication platform that uses controlled extensional flows to engineer 3D collagen hydrogels with precisely tunable fiber alignment landscapes. Our results show that alignment gradients provide a directional bias for single cells and cell aggregates compared to uniform fiber alignment domains. These findings suggest a new guidance cue and emphasize the mechanical role of extracellular matrix anisotropy in cell motility. This platform establishes a framework for integrating engineering approaches into the study of ECM-guided migration, relevant to tissue engineering, cancer research, and biomaterials design.

Vinay Abhyankar earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he leads the Biological Microsystems Laboratory and is the director of the Biomedical and Chemical Engineering Ph.D. program. His research program focuses on developing 3D tissue models to study multi-cue directed migration and building instrumented microphysiological systems (MPS) to explore barrier function.

• Time: 11:00 AM
• Location: 206 Furnas Hall