Professor and Vice-Chair of Research
University of California, Davis/Orthopaedic Surgery and Biomedical Engineering
Kent Leach is the Lawrence J. Ellison Endowed Professor of Musculoskeletal Research and Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Davis. His research interests are focused on developing cell-instructive biomaterials for tissue engineering of replacement tissues and cultivated meat, applying transport principles for growth of engineered tissues and modeling cancer, and translation from the bench to the clinic. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research Part A, the official journal of the Society For Biomaterials (SFB). He was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in 2017 and as a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society in 2018. He is the Program Director of one of six NIH-funded predoctoral training grants focused on musculoskeletal health nationally. He has received multiple teaching and mentorship awards at UC Davis, and he holds various leadership roles in his scientific communities including membership on the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS) America’s Council, Board of Directors of BMES, and Member-at-Large of the International Society of Fracture Repair within the Orthopaedic Research Society (ORS).