Kayla Wolf

Biography

Dr. Kayla Wolf is a visiting assistant professor in biomedical engineering at the Meinig School. She is currently an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Jennifer Lewis's laboratory at Harvard University, where she has developed a stem cell-derived perfusable kidney collecting duct on-chip that can be used for disease modeling or embedded within biomanufactured tissue. She received her Ph.D. in bioengineering from the joint program at University of California, Berkeley - University of California, San Francisco. During her graduate studies, she investigated how tumor cell-matrix interactions influence cell invasion and could therefore be leveraged as therapeutic targets. Dr. Wolf is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Predoctoral Fellow (F31), and Siebel Fellow. Prior to her PhD, she earned a B.S. in chemistry and a B.S. in human biology from Michigan State University. She joins the Meinig School in Ithaca as an assistant professor on January 1, 2025.

Research Interests

The Wolf laboratory at Cornell will address clinical needs in kidney and women's reproductive health by developing models of urogenital tract tissues and investigating biophysical forces that direct tissue function, involving the following research areas:

• Advanced Materials
• Bioengineering
• Biomedical Engineering
• Biotechnology
• Materials Design
• Mechanics of Biological Materials
• Polymers and Soft Matter
• Rapid Prototyping
• Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials