Witzenburg lands MIRA grant

Colleen Witzenburg, the Jane R. and John G. Mandula Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has received a five-year, $1.25 million grant through a Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Witzenburg, who studies the mechanics of tissues with a particular focus on the cardiovascular system, will use the funding to improve multiscale imaging and mechanical testing of soft tissues. Disease and injury create spatial remodeling involving the extracellular matrix that surrounds cells. By better understanding those regional patterns, Witzenburg’s work could inform disease detection, prognosis and treatments.