Dr. Silviya Zustiak
Assistant Professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Missouri University of Science and Technology
United States of America
Biography
Silviya Petrova Zustiak, Ph.D. joined the Biomedical Engineering Department as an Assistant Professor in spring 2013. She obtained a BS/MS degree in Bioelectrical Engineering from Technical University, Sofia, Bulgaria in 2002 and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland Baltimore County, MD in 2009. During her doctoral studies under the guidance of Dr. Jennie Leach, Silviya developed hydrogels as scaffolds for neural tissue engineering. Dr. Zustiak conducted post-doctoral research for three years at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD, at the Laboratory of Integrative and Medical Biophysics under Dr. Ralph Nossal, utilizing spectroscopic techniques to study solute transport within hydrogel matrices. Dr. Zustiak’s primary research interests are in Hydrogel Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering, with emphasis on developing novel biomaterials as cell scaffolds and drug screening platforms, and elucidating matrix structure-property relationships as well as cell-matrix interactions. Biomaterial-based models are crucial for bridging the gap between traditional tissue culture and animal models by providing a cell environment that closely mimics real tissue. This research is highly multidisciplinary, merging the fields of engineering, materials science, and biology.
Research Interest
Hydrogel Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering
Publications
-
Zustiak, S.P., Nossal, R., Sackett, D., “Hindered Diffusion in Polymeric Solutions Studied by Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopyâ€, Biophysical Journal, 2011, 101, 255-264. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2011.05.035
-
Zustiak, S.P., Wei, Y., Leach, J.B., “Protein-hydrogel interactions in tissue engineering: mechanisms and applicationsâ€, Tissue Engineering Reviews, 2012, 19(2): 160-171. doi: 10.1089/ten.teb.2012.0458
-
Zustiak, S.P., Riley, J., Boukari, H., Gandjbakhche, H.A., Nossal, R., “Effects of Multiple Scattering on Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy Measurements of Particles Moving within Optically Dense Mediaâ€, Journal of Biomedical Optics, 2012, 17(12), 125004-125004. doi: 10.1117/1.JBO.17.12.125004
-
Zustiak, S.P., Pubill, S., Ribeiro, A., Leach, JB., “Hydrolytically degradable poly(ethylene glycol) hydrogel scaffolds as a cell delivery vehicle: characterization of PC12 cell responseâ€, Biotechnology Progress, 2013, 29(5), 1255-1264 doi: 10.1021/btpr.1761
-
Zustiak, S.P., Nossal, R., Sackett, D., “Multiwell stiffness assay for the study of cell responsiveness to cytotoxic drugsâ€, Biotechnology & Bioengineering, 2013, doi: 10.1002/bit.25097
