Photo: Bryce Vickmark

Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia     
20th Heinz Award for Technology,the Economy and Employment

Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia, bioengineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is recognized for her seminal work in tissue engineering and disease detection, including the cultivation of functional liver cells outside the human body.

As a graduate student at MIT, Dr. Bhatia was assigned the task of cultivating living liver cells in a petri dish, an endeavor that had been attempted for many years. A visit to a microfabrication facility — where students laid circuits out on silicon chips — inspired her to see if the same technology could be used to “print” tiny liver cells on plastic. The result was the first “microliver,” a miniature model organ now widely used to test drug reactions efficiently and predictively.

Dr. Bhatia’s team has also made singular strides in developing simple, affordable cancer screening tools. One uses tiny particles or nanoparticles to create biomarkers for cancer in urine samples on paper strips; the other is a “cancer-detecting yogurt,” containing engineered probiotic bacteria.