Philip LeDuc, PhD

William J. Brown Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University

Research Interests

The Leduc lab works at the intersection of mechanical engineering and biology by envisioning cells and molecules as systems that can be investigated with some of the same fundamental approaches used on machines such as planes and automobiles looking for unifying principles. These systems range from mammalian cells to microorganisms to developmental biology systems and apply principles from mechanical engineering fields to understand how these principles may apply across diverse nature-based systems.

In the energy domain, the lab is focused on algae and bacterial fuel cells. My lab conducts basic science and applied research in crossing over mechanical engineering approaches including solid mechanics, fluid mechanics, control theory, etc. with biological systems ranging from algae to artificial cells to developmental biology.

Biological “Systems”-Based Mechanical Engineering Approaches (Beckman Young Investigator-2nd CMU professor to win, DOE, NSF, ONR, AFOSR). An important goal of my work is to investigate biological systems with mechanical engineering approaches, which we enable by synthesizing novel technologies. We are working with biological systems ranging from mammalian cells to artificial cells to developmental systems using mechanical engineering approaches (solid mechanics, fluid dynamics, controls, design). (Nature Nanotechnology, Trends in Biotechnology, Applied Physics Letters, JACS, Advanced Materials, Nano Letters, Nature).

We also founded the Center for the Mechanics and Engineering of Cellular Systems (CMECS) at CMU including over 20 faculty members from engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, and computer science, with the goal of using mechanical engineering with cellular systems to address biological problems ranging from disease to bioenergy to malnutrition in third-world countries.

Keywords

Bioengineering, biomechanics, biomimetic tissue constructs, cell engineering, biomaterials, tissue engineering, machine learning, biomedical manufacturing