Aaron Baker

Biography

Aaron Baker is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering and a Fellow of the Marion E. Forsman Centennial Professorship in Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned his B.S.E/M.S.E. degrees in Bioengineering from the University of Washington and his Doctoral degree from the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Program. He is a fellow of the American Heart Association and served as an associate scientific advisor for Science Translational Medicine. His group’s work has been recognized through multiple awards including the New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and his group has received support through grants from the American Heart Association, DOD, NIH and the Welch Foundation. Dr. Baker’s laboratory focuses on using multidisciplinary approaches to study the mechanisms of cardiovascular disease and vascular mechanobiology. His group works on multiple projects including the development of proteoglycan-based/glycomimetic therapies for vascular disease and peripheral ischemia, creating new technologies for studying mechanobiology, and exploring the role of mechanical forces in stem cell biology.

Dr. Baker’s laboratory uses interdisciplinary approaches from biomedical engineering, molecular biology and medical physiology to discover and develop new therapies to treat debilitating diseases. A major focus of the laboratory has been to address the pressing need for new therapies for cardiovascular disease and to understand the mechanisms of therapeutic resistance to regenerative therapies. His group uses molecular tools such as gene knockout, creation of force sensitive FRET constructs and CRISPR gene editing with engineering tools including mechanical engineering design, computational modeling and advanced imaging techniques to study the mechanisms of vascular disease and design new therapies. Overall, his laboratory works in the following synergistic research areas: (1) The development of proteoglycan-based/glycomimetic therapies for vascular disease and peripheral ischemia. (2) The design and implementation of novel high throughput instrumentation for creating next generation biomimetic drug screening assays that incorporate physiological mechanical forces and flow. (3) The exploration of the role of mechanical forces in enhancing and controlling the response to stem cell therapies.

Google Scholar Page