Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Primary Mentor: D. Kacy Cullen, PhD, University of Pennsylvania and Corporal Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center
Secondary Mentor: Joachim Kohn, Rutgers University
Research Project: Advanced biomaterials and regenerative medicine strategies for the repair of major peripheral nerve injuries. Dr. Shultz received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Drexel University, where he worked under the mentorship of Dr. Yinghui Zhong to develop drug delivery systems for the treatment of spinal cord injury. In Dr. Shultz’s thesis work, he designed novel microparticle-embedded hydrogel systems for sustained drug release and applied these systems to evaluate the effect of locally delivering neuroprotective, immunomodulatory, and pro-regenerative drugs to the injured spinal cord. After graduating, Dr. Shultz joined the labs of Dr. Kacy Cullen and Dr. Joachim Kohn, where he studies peripheral nerve injuries. In his current postdoctoral fellowship, Dr. Shultz is working to advance polymeric nerve guidance conduit and living tissue engineered nerve graft technologies toward clinical translation. In addition, Dr. Shultz has applied tissue engineering and biomaterials approaches to develop a novel in vitro model of axon fusion, a potentially transformative but poorly understood nerve repair strategy. He is now using this model to study cellular mechanisms of fusion phenomena, informing the development of novel repair technologies and strategies capable of dramatically improving patient quality of life.