Keynote Speakers

Don’t Miss Moments at the 2026 CMBE Conference

Explore the standout sessions and renowned speakers shaping this year’s program.

Brendan Harley

💡 Professor
📍 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Biography
Brendan Harley is the Robert W. Schaefer Professor in the Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as well as Program Leader in the Cancer Center at Illinois. He received a B.S. in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University, a Sc.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT, and performed postdoctoral studies at the Joint Program for Transfusion Medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston.

Dr. Harley is a biomaterials scientist with an international profile in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. His research group develops tissue engineering technologies for musculoskeletal regeneration, hematopoietic stem cell biomanufacturing, as well as to investigate endometrial pathologies and invasive brain cancer. He is a decorated instructor, has had leadership experiences at his university, within interdisciplinary research institutes, and across the biomedical community, and co-founded a regenerative medicine company, Orthomimetics Ltd., to commercialize an osteochondral regeneration technology.

Dr. Harley has received a number of awards and honors including an NSF CAREER award (2013), the Young Investigator Award (2014) and the Clemson Award for Basic Research (2021) from the Society for Biomaterials, as well as university research, teaching, and promotion awards (U. Illinois). He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the Biomedical Engineering Society.

Why you should listen
Nearly all modern engineered systems are highly determinant, with well-defined structure-function-property relationships designed for well-characterized operational envelopes. In contrast, living systems are multicellular, hierarchically organized, and evolve in space and time across the lifespan (e.g., development, homeostasis, ageing, and disease). Biomaterials are a central part of bioengineering efforts to regenerate tissues and create biomimetic environments to study disease progression and therapy outside the body. Over the last twenty years the bioengineering community has focused on knowing more and on initiatives that integrate expertise from a broad set of STEM disciplines. Yet, our current generality-focused, one-size-fits-all perspective related to bioengineering research design cannot address emergent challenges tied to sex, age, and other underlying considerations that contribute to health inequities. Bioengineering is at an inflection point. The complex societal challenges we face will require bioengineering to foster connections across avant-garde (e.g., art, humanities, social science, etc.) disciplines. We must imagine new ways to assemble scholarly communities based on justice, access, collaboration, and care.

Personal note
I am a husband, father, and runner. And I am a 30 year cancer survivor whose experience as a patient profoundly shaped my perspectives about career and leadership.

What are you best known for? What is your crowning achievement?
Creative interdisciplinary research, mentoring, and service to the bioengineering community.

Christopher J. Hernandez

💡 Professor
📍 University of California, San Francisco

Biography
Dr. Hernandez is a Professor in the Departments of Orthopaedic Surgery and Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco and the department of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley. He is also the Director of Health Innovations Via Engineering at UCSF and is an Investigator at the Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco. Dr. Hernandez is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). He is the 2018 recipient of the Fuller Albright Award for Scientific Excellence and the Adele Boskey Award from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. In 2022 he was named to the inaugural class of BRITE Fellows by the National Science Foundation. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Orthopaedic Research Society and is currently serving as Councilor to the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. His laboratory’s research currently focuses on the effects of the microbiome on the musculoskeletal system and orthopaedic surgery, the biomechanics and mechanobiology of bacteria and engineered living materials.


Website
hernandezresearch.com

Rebecca Pompano

💡 Associate Professor
📍 University of Virginia

Biography
Rebecca Pompano grew up in Hanover, Virginia, where her mother taught art and piano lessons and her father taught high school chemistry. When she was in elementary school, her father went back to school and spent the next 8 years completing a PhD in Analytical Chemistry in the evenings and weekends, while still teaching high school full time. She and her sister spent many a Saturday doing homework and playing games in an empty lab space while her dad ran experiments. Money was tight, but there was plenty of time to read, make art, and create worlds with her sisters. Out of this came a love of discovering new things and the lived experience that one should work hard to achieve their dreams. That and some luck carried her to a full scholarship in science at the University of Richmond and then a PhD in Chemistry at the University of Chicago (2011). Her PhD work with Rustem Ismagilov was in making tiny tools called microfluidic devices to study how blood clots and cells talk to one another.

Rebecca’s high school job was in the office of a family friend, whose multiple sclerosis eventually confined him to a wheelchair but did not stop his generosity to help others. The progression of his disease during her PhD inspired her to study immunology, so for her postdoctoral studies she worked with bioengineer Joel Collier and immunologist Anita Chong in the UChicago medical school, developing vaccines made from non-inflammatory nanoparticles.

Now, Rebecca is an Associate Professor in Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia. She teaches and runs a research laboratory that combines concepts from chemistry and engineering to understand how the immune system works, to help design better vaccines and immunotherapies for diseases like autoimmunity and cancer.

Why you should listen
Rebecca Pompano, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Virginia, and a member of the Beirne Carter Center for Immunology Research. She completed a BS in Chemistry at the University of Richmond (2006) and a PhD at the University of Chicago (2011). Her laboratory’s research focuses on developing organ-on-chip and bioanalytical tools to analyze lymph node function after vaccination and during inflammatory disease. She co-chaired the inaugural Gordon Research Conference for Immunoengineering in 2022 and the 2023 International Symposium on Microscale Separations and Bioanalysis. She is currently the Treasurer of the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society, which organizes MicroTAS and other microfluidics conferences. She has earned a number of awards for her research, including a 2022 Gordon and Betty Moore Inventor Fellowship and 2023 UVA Shannon Center Mid-Career Fellowship. Prof. Pompano is an advocate for inclusive environments in STEM, both in research and in the classroom.

What hobbies, causes, or activities are you passionate about aside from your work? Family, knitting, local music and theater, long COVID advocacy, science advocacy

What are you best known for? What is your crowning achievement?
I think I’m still too early in my career to have made my crowning achievement yet. But modeling lymph node function in organ-on-chip systems is what we are working towards and probably known for.