Rate My Professor Eben Alsberg

Eben Alsberg is the Richard and Loan Hill Chair and UIC Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Pharmacology and Regenerative Medicine, and Orthopaedic Surgery at the University of Illinois Chicago in the Engineering faculty. He directs the Institute for Functional and Regenerative Materials and the Alsberg Stem Cell and Engineered Novel Therapeutics (ASCENT) Laboratory. Alsberg earned B.S.E. degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science from Duke University (1994), M.S.E. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan (1998), and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan (2002). He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School (2005) and served as a professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Orthopaedic Surgery at Case Western Reserve University (2005-2018) prior to joining UIC.

His research focuses on innovative biomaterials, engineered microenvironments, and bioactive factor delivery vehicles for functional tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and disease therapeutics. Areas of interest include developmental engineering, stem cell fate control, precise temporal and spatial signal presentation to regulate cell function, 4D systems, biofabrication and bioprinting, mechanotransduction and mechanics influence on cell behavior and tissue formation, organoids and organogenesis, therapeutic angiogenesis, and cell-cell interactions. Alsberg has received the TERMIS-AM 2022 Senior Scientist Award and election as Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (2022), Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERM), International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering (IAMBE), American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). Other honors include the Biovalley Young Investigator Award, Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar in Aging Award, Crain’s Cleveland Business Forty Under 40 Award, Technion Lady Davis Fellowship, and Visiting Professorship at Kyung Hee University. He has authored more than 145 peer-reviewed publications cited over 13,500 times, including "Degradation of partially oxidized alginate and its potential application for tissue engineering" (Biotechnology Progress, 2001), "Photocrosslinked alginate hydrogels with tunable biodegradation rates and mechanical properties" (Biomaterials, 2009), "Engineering growing tissues" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2002), "Individual cell-only bioink and photocurable supporting medium for 3D printing and generation of engineered tissues with complex geometries" (Materials Horizons, 2019), and "Mesenchymal stromal cell chondrogenic differentiation induced by continuous stiffness gradient in photocrosslinkable hydrogels" (Biomedical Materials Research Part A, 2025).