Postdoctoral Fellow
Harvard University, Disease Biophysics Group
Dr. John Zimmerman received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and is currently working as a postdoctoral research associate in the Disease Biophysics Groups at Harvard University. John is interested in the interface between material science and biological systems, and in building functional devices to explore fundamental structure-function relationships in biology. This has included studying how synthetic nanomaterials can be internalized by cellular systems, using tissue-engineered single cell islands to explore nanoparticle uptake and transport, as well as label-free nanowire endocytosis. More recently, his work has focused on using tissue-engineered muscular platforms as models for structural phenotyping. This has included quantifying contractile phenotypes in human-stem cell derived muscular dystrophy, as well as, building 3D nanofiber based ventricle models to study how cardiac alignment impacts pumping efficiency in the heart.