Treena Livingston Arinzeh

Arinzeh was born in 1970[3] and raised in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.[4] She became interested in science by conducting imaginary experiments in the kitchen with her mother, who was a home economics teacher.[5] She was encouraged to pursue a STEM career by her high school physics teacher.[6]

Arinzeh studied Mechanical Engineering at Rutgers University, receiving a B.S. in 1992.[7] She earned a M.S.E. in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 1994.[7][8] She continued her graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, completing a PhD in Biomedical Engineering in 1999.[5]

Arinzeh worked for Baltimore-based Osiris Therapeutics as a product development engineer.[6] In 2001, she returned to academia and started working at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark, New Jersey,[7] where she founded the first Tissue Engineering and Applied Biomaterials Laboratory at NJIT in the fall of 2001.[9] She currently still works at NJIT as Professor of Biomedical Engineering.[7] She has published over 60 journal articles, conference proceedings, and book chapters.[10]

Her current research focuses on systematic studies of the effect of biomaterial properties on stem cell differentiation.[7] She is known for discovering that mixing stem cells with scaffolding[note 1][11] allows regeneration of bone growth and the repair of tissue damage.[12][13] She also discovered that one person's stem cells could be implanted in another person without causing an adverse immune response.[12] In 2018, she received an QED award to work on the recovery time and cost patients experience after bone grafting procedures.[2]

She is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)[14] and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES).[15]

She is currently a co-PI and the Director of Diversity of the NSF Science and Technology Center on Engineering Mechano-Biology, which is a multi-institutional center with the University of Pennsylvania and Washington University in St. Louis.[15] In addition, Arinzeh actively tries to increase representation of minority students in biomedical engineering by being a mentor as part of the Project Seeds program supported by the American Chemical Society. Every summer, she invites 40 to 50 teens from under-represented groups to her lab to learn about engineering and her research.[16]

In 2018, Arinzeh was selected to be a Judge for Nature scientific journal's newly created Innovating Science Panel Award.[9]

• 2018: QED Award recipient [2]
• 2018: George Bugliarello Prize winner [17]
• 2010: Grio Awards recipient [18]
• 2004: Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers recipient [5][19][13]
• 2003: Faculty Early Career Development Award recipient, awarded by the National Science Foundation[1]

• 2017: Three-dimensional piezoelectric fibrous scaffolds selectively promote mesenchymal stem cell differentiation. Biomaterials.[20]
• 2015: The effect of PVDF-TrFE scaffolds on stem cell derived cardiovascular cells. Biotechnology & Bioengineering. [21]
• 2015: An investigation of common crosslinking agents on the stability of electrospun collagen scaffolds. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research. [22]
• 2013: Examining the formulation of emulsion electrospinning for improving the release of bioactive proteins from electrospun fibers. Journal of Biomedical Materials Research. [23]
• 2005: "A comparative study of biphasic calcium phosphate ceramics for human mesenchymal stem-cell-induced bone formation" Biomaterials. [24]

• "Treena Livingston Arinzeh Receives Innovators Award from NJ Inventors Hall of Fame." New Jersey Institute of Technology, NJIT News Room, 28 Oct. 2013, www6.njit.edu/news/2013/2013-352.php.