Biologist and bioengineer Donald E. Ingber doesn’t have time to sleep. As the founding director of The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, finding time outside of work hasn’t gotten easier with age. At 67, his morning still starts at 5 a.m., running through a pile of emails that seems to grow larger by the day.
By lunch, he’s already revised the budget for a crucial government grant and met with postdoctoral fellows regarding work on various research projects. Ingber also deals with unexpected issues, like immigration and political turbulence, that he never dreamed would fall under his purview. Recently, when a scientist he hired from Germany came with his wife and child and was turned away at Logan Airport for having an Iranian passport, Ingber spent the morning wrangling with the Harvard visa office, trying to get him back into the country.
He’s as much a CEO as he is a scientist. He takes Biologist and bioengineer Donald E. Ingber doesn’t have time to sleep. As the founding director of The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, finding time outside of work hasn’t gotten easier with age. At 67, his morning still starts at 5 a.m., running through a pile of emails that seems to grow larger by the day.
Ingber’s work was previously featured in Discover, when we covered the development of the so-called “lung-on-a-chip” and “body-on-a-chip.” One of his latest projects is the “vagina-on-a-chip.” These minute devices, made up of clear polymer and about the size of a USB thumb drive, contain hollow “micro-fluidic channels” lined with living cells that mimic the body’s organs. Each organ-on-a-chip uses human tissue kept vital with a circulatory system that allows the cells to remain alive.
Using such tiny renderings of living human organs, Ingber has shown that in many ways chip technology is more effective — and humane — than using animal models. The chips are also less variable than using human subjects.
