August 11, 2020 BMES names Masters, Murphy, Williams fellows Written By: Tom Ziemer Departments: Biomedical Engineering Categories: Awards The Biomedical Engineering Society has honored University of Wisconsin-Madison professors Kristyn Masters, William Murphy and Justin Williams as part of its 2020 Class of Fellows. It’s the latest honor for the decorated trio. All three are also fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and have held numerous leadership positions at UW-Madison. Masters, a Vilas Distinguished Professor and H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellow, employs tissue engineering and gene editing techniques to model diseases more precisely, particularly cardiovascular maladies and cancer. Her lab was the first to discover an important distinction among heart valve cells: those from males behave different than those from females. Murphy, the Harvey D. Spangler Professor and H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellow, creates new biomaterials to improve drug delivery, stem cell development, gene therapy and tissue engineering. He also directs the Forward BIO Institute on campus and chairs the Forward BIO Initiative, a public-private partnership to innovation and workforce development in biomanufacturing in Wisconsin and beyond. Williams, a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor, works in neural engineering, including brain-computer interfaces, other neuromodulation devices in which nerves are electrically stimulated for therapeutic effects, and better sensors for imaging brain activity.