Dr. Tracy Cui is William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh.  Dr. Cui is the Director of the Neural Tissue/Electrode Interface and Neural Tissue Engineering Lab.  She is also the Neural Engineering Track Coordinator for the Department of Bioengineering Graduate Committee. Prior to this she was a Research Scientist at Unilever Research US in Edgewater, New Jersey.

Dr. Cui earned her BE in Polymer Materials and Chemical Engineering and her MS in Biophysics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.  She went on to earn her PhD in Macromolecular Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In Dr. Cui’s lab, the primary research focus is on the interactions between neural tissue and smart biomaterials. This field of study is applied toward the better understanding of the neural tissue/material interface and neural tissue engineering.  Dr Cui’s research interests lie in neural engineering with special focuses on neural electrode-tissue interface, neural tissue engineering, central nervous system drug delivery, and biosensors.  Specific projects include: biomimetic surface coatings for neural microelectrode arrays to improve chronic neural recording and stimulation stability, reliability and longevity; controlled drug delivery; biochemical sensing in the nervous system; and control of neural stem cell growth and differentiation via surface and electrical cues.

For her work, Dr. Cui has won numerous awards, most recently:

• -2017 Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry in 2017
• -2016 Fellow of American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering
• -2013 and 2014 Peking University Engineering Globex Fellow
• -2013 Carnegie Science Emerging Female Scientist Award
• -2009, 2011 and 2015 Pitt Innovator Award
• -2008 National Science Foundation Career Award
• -2005 Wallace Coulter Foundation Translational Early Career Award

She serves as a grant agency reviewer for the National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation, National Research Agency of France, Science Foundation of Ireland, European Research Council and the American Institute of Biological Sciences.  Dr. Cui holds 6 granted U.S. patents, and she is a reviewer for many prestigious journals, such as Science, Nature Communication, ACS NanoAdvanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, Biomaterials, Acta Biomaterialia, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Journal of Neural Engineering amongst others.  Dr. Cui is on the editorial board of the Journal of Materials Chemistry B, Journal of Neural Engineering and Current Opinion in Biomedical Engineering.

View a list of Dr. Cui’s publications here.