FACULTY FOCUS

In May 2023, Venu Varanasi and his multi-institutional team of researchers including Marco Brotto, director of UTA’s Bone-Muscle Research Center, and Pranesh Aswath, professor of materials science and bioengineering, were awarded a $2.3 million grant to develop semiconductor biomaterials to help speed up bone healing in patients suffering from cranial bone defects. While he stands at the forefront of health care technology, Dr. Varanasi remains focused on what matters the most to him: strong collaboration and the development of his students.

What past accomplishment makes you proudest?

The accomplishments of my PhD students who are taking the next step toward a faculty position or the graduate students becoming postdocs or industry leaders. Those are the most important milestones in my career.

What are you excited about right now?

The chance to develop biomaterial technologies and get them into a potential clinical translation, and that ties into the mentoring, which trains the next generation on new principles and concepts from a clinical-outcomes point of view and leads to integrating those factors into the manufacturing process. We’re also learning how we can use our materials in muscle regeneration through my collaboration with Dr. Brotto and his network, and that has been very exciting because it gives us a chance to explore something new that nobody’s working on that much at the moment.

What are you most looking forward to?

Exploring more of this concept of bone-muscle crosstalk, which Dr. Brotto has been working on for awhile. But we’re also looking at the role biomaterials will play in treatments for not just one organ, but understanding what occurs between organs.