Juan Gnecco

Dr. Juan S. Gnecco is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. His research vision lies at the interface of tissue engineering and reproductive biology to understand the immune-endocrine mechanisms driving both reproductive physiology and disease pathogenesis. Dr. Gnecco obtained his B.S. in Biotechnology from Rutgers University, and a Ph.D in Cellular and Molecular Pathology from Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) under the mentorship of Dr. Kevin Osteen. In his PhD thesis, he developed the first organ-on-chip model of the perivascular endometrium and deployed this microphysiological systems (MPS) to illuminate the inflammatory effects exerted by environmental toxicants on the female reproductive tract. Dr. Gnecco then conducted his post-doctoral training at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with Dr. Linda Griffith in the Department of Biological Engineering. At MIT, Dr. Gnecco led efforts to transform the human clinical relevance of 3-dimensional (3D) reproductive tract models by defining the interplay between biophysical and biochemical cues on cell behavior. To do so, he developed synthetic extracellular matrices and organoid technologies that helped model and interrogate the tissue microenvironment in vitro. In parallel, he initiated and led an effort to define the tissue structure and composition of the human endometriotic (adenomyosis) lesions in 3D using tissue clearing and light-sheet imaging approaches. He has been awarded three rounds of funding from Gates Foundation (2018-present) for his work building phenotypic screening models of the female reproductive tract. He has been an invited speaker at the Society for Reproductive Investigation (2020/2021), the Gates Foundation Global Health Integrative Organoid Consortium (2021) and was selected as a Rising Star in Engineering and Health by Columbia University (2020). He serves on the editorial board for Frontiers in Reproductive Health. As the principal investigator of the Laboratory of Reproductive Engineering, his lab focuses on interdisciplinary and translational research by implementing engineering approaches and tools to uncover how inflammatory processes are regulated in the human female reproductive tract.