Xi Ren
Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Courtesy Appointment, Mechanical Engineering
Xi (Charlie) Ren was trained as a developmental biologist during his graduate study focusing on the vascular and hematopoietic systems. Moving from vascular development to vascular engineering, he joined the Laboratory for Organ Engineering and Regeneration at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 2012. He became Instructor in Surgery at Harvard Medical School in 2016. During this time, he developed systematic strategies for engineering functional vasculature based on decellularized organ scaffolds. He joined the faculty of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in 2017.
Controlling Tissue Morphogenesis to Inform Better Lung Treatment
Demonstration: Decellularizing a Lung Using Detergent Perfusion
Engineering Organ-Specific Vasculature
Education
2011 Ph.D., Cell Biology, Peking University
2005 BS, Biological Science, Peking University
Research Interests
Media mentions
Charles E. Kaufman Foundation
CMU researchers land grant funds for exosome research
BME’s Phil Campbell and Charlie Ren will be co-investigators on a recently announced grant from the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation to understand the immune consequences of the uptake of extracellular vesicles from the bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae by mammalian cells.
National Institutes of Health
Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. student receives $49k grant award
BME’s Dhruv Bhattaram, a second-year Ph.D. student, received $49k from the NIH to advance research on the development and application of lung epithelial organoids called apical-out airway organoids (AoAOs). Bhattaram has been part of BME’s Charlie Ren’s group, and as PI, he will partner with ChemE’s Coty Jen, MechE’s Amir Barati Farimani, and Pitt’s Kong Chen to present AoAOs as a next-generation theragnostic platform targeted towards airway health and cilia pathophysiology.
CMU Engineering
CMU-led project to fight obesity, Type 2 diabetes receives ARPA-H backing
A CMU-led team of researchers has secured an award of up to $34.9 million from ARPA-H to develop a new bioelectric medicine-based treatment for obesity and Type 2 diabetes patients.
NASA
BME alumna selected for next simulated Mars journey
Piyumi Wijesekara, a CMU BME alumna, has been selected by NASA to be one of four participants taking a simulated mission to Mars within a habitat at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.