Alum Dr. Jeffrey Millman is a Biomedical Engineering Rising Star

Alum Dr. Jeffrey Millman (B.S. ’05) is the recipient of a 2021 Rising Star Award from the Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Special Interest Group of the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES). According to the BMES, “The Rising Star Awards recognize a select group of exceptional junior principal investigators that have demonstrated research excellence.”

After completing his studies at NC State Jeff moved on to MIT, where he earned a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering in 2011. He completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at Harvard University in 2015.

Jeff is currently an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at Washington University School of Medicine and leads a regenerative medicine research laboratory that combines bioengineering principles with stem cell biology for the study and treatment of diabetes. In 2014, he discovered how to produce functional insulin-secreting cells from stem cells in bioreactors. The innovation was named one of the top 10 breakthroughs of 2014 by Science magazine.

The quality of Jeff’s research has been recognized by the AIChE with his selection as a recipient of the AIChE 35 Under 35 Award and by the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) with a Career Development Award. He was previously a Harvard Stem Cell Institute Fellow and a Barry Goldwater Scholar. He holds 7 issued U.S. patents: one of his co-inventions is the intellectual property basis for the formation of a company, Semma Therapeutics, that was acquired for $950M in 2019.

Coincidentally, he was also the recipient of the department’s Distinguished Young Alumni Award in 2019.

Congratulations to Jeff for this award and your outstanding successes as a researcher!