Brown Technology Innovations

Kiera Dwyer is a PhD student in the Biomedical Engineering program at Brown University. In her thesis work, Kiera is advised by Kareen Coulombe at the School of Engineering and is focused on developing engineered cardiac tissues as a therapy for heart regeneration after a heart attack. Kiera came to the program from the University of Notre Dame after receiving a ScB in Chemical Engineering. As a NSF-GRFP fellow in graduate school, Kiera worked to scale up engineered cardiac tissue in terms of size and number of functional cardiomyocytes derived from stem cells in order to facilitate the translation of this technology to the clinic. Currently, Kiera was awarded a Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women to finish her thesis work focused on combining re-muscularization and reinforcement strategies to improve heart function after injury. Throughout her time in graduate school, Kiera has been involved in the community through her involvement in the Biomedical Engineering Board of Graduate Students, serving as an instructor of Introduction to Engineering to the all-girls Lincoln high school and as an Innovation Fellow at the Brown Technology Office.