UCLA Professor Receives Biomedical Engineering Society Rising Star Award

Neil Lin, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering as well as bioengineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, has received a 2024 Rising Star Junior Faculty Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Cell and Molecular Bioengineering (CMBE) Special Interest Group.

The honor recognizes exceptional interdisciplinary research conducted by outstanding early-career investigators in cellular and molecular bioengineering, with a focus on developing and understanding biological processes and their applications in medicine.

Lin, who joined the UCLA faculty in 2019, was selected for his research on the mechanobioengineering of living soft materials. His research aims to develop engineering approaches to improve the function of biological tissues by understanding how mechanical cues and physiological stimuli can be leveraged to tailor cell behavior.

UCLA
Members of the Lin Lab Mechanobioengineering

At UCLA, he leads the Lin Lab Mechanobioengineering, whose goal is to accelerate the drug- development process by producing biological samples that better mimic human responses and providing microscopy methods that characterize cells more precisely and quickly. The team’s recent discoveries include developing AI tools for evaluating the identity and function of living cells, revealing how the interactions between cells and their neighboring environment affect cell properties, as well as how fluid flow and oxygen impact tissue development. 

Lin will present his research findings in January at the 2024 BMES-CMBE conference in Puerto Rico.

Among Lin’s other awards and recognitions are the Prostate Cancer Foundation’s Young Investigator Award, a Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and a Nanomedicine Innovation Planning Award from the Broad Stem Cell Research Center-California NanoSystems Institute.