Dr. Don Ingber Biography

Donald E. Ingber, M.D., Ph.D is the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology in the Department of Pathology at Harvard Medical School, and Departments of Pathology and Surgery at Children’s Hospital Boston.

He is a member of the Vascular Biology Program at Children’s Hospital, Center for Nanoscale Systems and Materials Research Science & Engineering Center at Harvard, Harvard-MIT Health Science and Technology Division, MIT Center for Bioengineering, and Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.

Ingber is also acting Co-Director of Harvard’s Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, and Director at Children’s Hospital of Harvard’s Center for Integration in Medicine and Innovative Technology. He has authored 250 publications and more than 25 patents in areas ranging from anti-angiogenic therapeutics, tissue engineering, medical devices, and nanotechnology to computer software.

He also helped to found two biotechnology start-ups, and has consulted for multiple pharmaceutical, biotechnology, venture capital and private investment companies and New York Public Radio. Through interdisciplinary collaborations with experts in chemistry, physics, engineering, magnetics and optics, Ingber has helped to develop multiple new biotechnologies, including molecular self-assembly techniques to create defined cell culture microenvironments, micro- and nano-magnetic methods to probe and manipulate cell structure and function, and nanosurgical laser methodologies to selectively vaporize nanodomains within living cells.

His pioneering work demonstrating that living cells mechanically structure themselves at the nanometer scale using tensegrity architecture, and that physical forces distributed over extra cellular matrix, integrins and cytoskeletal networks regulate tissue development, also has uncovered new and highly relevant design criteria for nanotechnologists and tissue engineers.