James An

James Ankrum is an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering. James got his undergraduate degree from the Univeristy of Iowa in Biomedical Engineering. He went on to earn his Masters from the University of Cambridge as the first Churchill Scholar ever selected from the University of Iowa. He earned his PhD from MIT in 2013 under the guidance of Prof. Jeff Karp, where he became fascinated with the field of regenerative medicine and cell-based therapies. After a year as a Senior Innovation Fellow at the University of Minnesota, he returned to the University of Iowa in 2014 to start his research lab in the Fraternal Order of Eagles Diabetes Research Center within the Pappajohn Biomedical Institute. Dr. Ankrum and his group use bioengineering strategies to enhance cell-based therapies for regenerative medicine, develop tissue models for drug discovery, and engineer drug release technologies for controlled drug release.