Engineering biological machines from living tissues

Engineered tissues have the potential to serve as sensing, actuation, and mechanical support elements for soft machines that possess biomimetic functionality. Conventional biohybrid constructs involve the use of synthetic structures made from hydrogels or elastomers as support elements because free-standing contractile tissues do not have a stable form. In this talk, I am going to explain how physical principles of morphogenesis can be harnessed for the controlled self-assembly of tissues with complex equilibrium shapes. The discovery of these principles involves the use of advanced microscopy, robotic microsurgery, microtechnology, and computational modelling. Combined with our efforts in the development of genetically engineered skeletal muscle biological actuators, we can finally envision the conception of reconfigurable and self-healing robots that are autonomously assembled from living matter.