Joshua Gershlak

Josh is originally from Peabody, Massachusetts. He graduated from Case Western Reserve University in 2011 with a degree in biomedical engineering, where he also played four years of varsity football. From there, Josh received his master’s of science from Tufts University in 2014 where he performed research on stem cell-ECM interactions and in particular learned the technique of decellularization. He joined the WPI Myocardial Regeneration Lab in the summer of 2014 and received his PhD in 2018. Josh has performed some work on the lab’s fibrin suture technology but has mostly been focused on decellularization. He, along with Professor Gaudette, has coauthored articles on decellularization in collaboration with the Ott Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital. One such paper was the first time that a whole human heart was decellularized and then made fully functional through recelluarization with human iPS-CMs. Josh’s main focus has been on the development of some of the exciting new work coming from the lab in collaboration with University of Wisconsin Madison and Arkansas State University on utilizing decellularized plants as perfusable scaffolds for tissue engineering. He was the lead on “plantamils” project – looking to use plants to help overcome health problems in humans.