Professor Milica Radisic (ChemE, BME) has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. This honour recognizes Radisic’s “distinguished contributions to the field of organ-on-a-chip engineering, particularly for innovation in human cell-based platforms to study the physiological effects of chemicals on human tissues and organs.”

Radisic is the Canada Research Chair in Organ-on-a-Chip Engineering and a senior scientist at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. She is internationally acclaimed for spearheading the field of organ-on-a-chip engineering, which provides human cell-based platforms for developing and studying human tissues and organs. These lab-grown platforms provide a cutting-edge tool for studying a wide range of diseases. They can also be used to test new drugs for effectiveness and potential side effects, reducing the need for animal models.

While culturing human cells in petri dishes isn’t new, these cells often do not look or behave like those in the human body. Radisic and her team use innovative, biocompatible polymer materials and unique microfabrication techniques to design scaffolds that enable these cells to grow in a more realistic environment.

Radisic’s lab was the first in the world to use electrical stimulation to mature human heart cells, a longstanding challenge in tissue engineering. She developed a micro-tissue cultivation platform, called Biowire, which is now accepted as the gold standard for cardiac cell maturation.

Radisic is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Engineering, two of Canada’s three scholarly academies. She is also a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, the Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine International Society, and the U.S. National Academy of Inventors. She has held an NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship and a Killam Research Fellowship, two of Canada’s most prestigious research fellowships. In 2024, she received the NSERC John C. Polanyi Award, for a recent outstanding scientific advance.

“Professor Milica Radisic’s development of groundbreaking methods for developing and maturing cells and tissues has made her a leader in the field of organ-on-a-chip engineering, and opened up new possibilities for addressing critical health challenges,” says U of T Engineering Dean Christopher Yip. “On behalf of the entire faculty, my heartfelt congratulations on this richly deserved recognition.”