Young Hye Song, Ph.D. 2016

Young Hye Song received her Ph.D. in 2016. Her research under the mentorship of professor Claudia Fischbach-Teschl focused on understanding the pro-angiogenic behavior of adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) in the context of breast tumor microenvironment. Using tissue engineering tools, she helped uncover new mechanisms in which cell-extracellular matrix interactions and paracrine signaling lead to ASC activation and subsequent increase in angiogenesis. 

In August 2016, Young Hye started her postdoctoral training under professor Christine Schmidt in biomedical engineering at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL. There she worked on novel, apoptosis-based tissue decellularization methods and developing in vitro test beds of traumatic neural injuries. Her postdoctoral work led to several U.S. patent applications and peer-reviewed publications. After three years of postdoctoral training, Young Hye moved to Fayetteville, AR, in August 2019 to start her faculty career as a tenure-track assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Arkansas. Based on experiences and knowledge gained from both Fischbach-Teschl and Schmidt labs, Young Hye currently directs a lab that uses tissue engineering strategies to study cancer-nerve crosstalk and traumatic neural injuries. She hopes that work from her lab will lead to identifying novel treatment targets and developing combinatorial therapeutics. Young Hye is grateful for the experiences and connections she made during her time at Cornell and hopes to leverage her faculty position to pay it forward to the future generation of biomedical engineers.