About

Rohan Shirwaiker is the James T. Ryan Professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) and serves as the Associate Director of the Functional Tissue Engineering Program at the Comparative Medicine Institute (CMI). He is also an associate faculty member of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. His research group, the 3D Tissue Manufacturing group, focuses on the design and scalable manufacturing of engineered tissue products for biomedical and food applications. His work involves engineering new bio-fabrication processes such as ultrasound-assisted bioprinting and 3D nonwovens, developing biomimetic tissue designs for tissue-engineered and orthopedic products as well as cultivated meats, and creating non-destructive quality monitoring techniques like dielectric and ultrasound spectroscopy. Additionally, his team designs multimodal bioreactors for scaling up and out, utilizing computational modeling, experimental approaches, and data analytics to investigate the relationships between process parameters, biomaterials, and the functional quality of bioproducts. His research is highly multidisciplinary and collaborative, supported by grants from various agencies including the NSF, NIH, US Department of Defense, and industry partners. Shirwaiker has co-authored over 150 publications and holds three patents. He has received numerous awards such as the NSF CAREER Award, SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, and others, recognizing his contributions to manufacturing, tissue engineering, and regenerative medicine.

Research topics

• Biomedical engineering
• Materials science
• Chemistry
• Engineering
• Organic chemistry
• Composite material
• Chemical engineering
• Polymer chemistry
• Nanotechnology
• Biochemistry

Selected publications

• Assessment of Bovine Collagen Manufactured via Cellular Agriculture

  ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering · 2026-05-08

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Cellular agriculture offers a transformative approach to protein production by creating biologically derived alternatives to animal-sourced biomaterials. This study focuses on the comprehensive characterization of bovine collagen produced via cellular agriculture. A bovine fibroblast cell line optimized for collagen production was cultured in a custom bioreactor system to produce collagen (≥95% type I), which was extracted, purified, lyophilized, reconstituted at 8 mg/mL, and cast into self-assembling fibrillar hydrogels (Ø8 × 4 mm2) at neutral pH and 37 °C. Functional properties of this cell-based (CB) collagen were benchmarked against traditional animal-derived (AD) bovine collagen. SDS-PAGE confirmed their molecular similarity, revealing characteristic α-chains (∼120 kDa), β-dimers (∼240 kDa), and γ-trimers (∼300 kDa). Amino acid analysis showed nearly identical amino acid profiles, and differential scanning calorimetry analysis highlighted equivalent thermal stability between them. Furthermore, circular dichroism spectroscopy confirmed preservation of the triple-helical structure in the CB collagen. Mechanical testing demonstrated that CB hydrogels possessed significantly higher compressive and dynamic moduli (1260 ± 191 Pa and 6250 ± 1031 Pa, respectively) compared to the AD hydrogels (890 ± 255 Pa and 3134 ± 1857 Pa, respectively) (p < 0.05), indicating better structural integrity and shape retention. Rheological analysis supported these findings, indicated by the higher storage and loss moduli of CB hydrogels (48.40 ± 8.5 Pa and 13.20 ± 1.3 Pa, respectively) than AD hydrogels (25 ± 2.12 Pa and 10 ± 1.58 Pa, respectively) (p < 0.05). Surface wettability testing highlighted comparable hydrophilicity for CB and AD collagens. Finally, the biocompatibility of the CB hydrogels was evident from the notable increase in cultured fibroblast cell density, live cell area, and metabolic activity over 7 days. This comparative assessment underscores the functional equivalence of CB collagen with conventional animal-derived sources and offers critical insights for optimizing cellular agriculture-based production systems and hydrogel formulations for application-specific requirements in the future.

  PublisherDOI

• The evaluation of a multiphasic 3D‐bioplotted scaffold seeded with adipose derived stem cells to repair osteochondral defects in a porcine model

  UNC Libraries · 2026-04-08

  articleOpen access

  There is a need for the development of effective treatments for focal articular cartilage injuries. We previously developed a multiphasic 3D-bioplotted osteochondral scaffold design that can drive site-specific tissue formation when seeded with adipose-derived stem cells (ASC). The objective of this study was to evaluate this scaffold in a large animal model. Osteochondral defects were generated in the trochlear groove of Yucatan minipigs and repaired with scaffolds that either contained or lacked an electrospun tidemark and were either unseeded or seeded with ASC. Implants were monitored via computed tomography (CT) over the course of 4&nbsp;months of in vivo implantation and compared to both open lesions and autologous explants. ICRS II evaluation indicated that defects with ASC-seeded scaffolds had healing that most closely resembled the aulogous explant. Scaffold-facilitated subchondral bone repair mimicked the structure of native bone tissue, but cartilage matrix staining was not apparent within the scaffold. The open lesions had the highest volumetric infill detected using CT analysis (p&nbsp;&lt;&thinsp;0.05), but the repair tissue was largely disorganized. The acellular scaffold without a tidemark had significantly more volumetric filling than either the acellular or ASC seeded groups containing a tidemark (p&nbsp;&lt;&thinsp;0.05), suggesting that the tidemark limited cell infiltration into the cartilage portion of the scaffold. Overall, scaffold groups repaired the defect more successfully than an open lesion but achieved limited repair in the cartilage region. With further optimization, this approach holds potential to treat focal cartilage lesions in a highly personalized manner using a human patient's own ASC cells.

  PublisherDOI

• Cell culture media for cultivated meat: Review and perspectives on first principles design to drive cost-effective scale-up

  Future Foods · 2026-01-12 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Background: Cultivated meat (CM) has the potential to complement conventional meat while reducing the environmental footprint of food production to meet the growing global protein demand. Cell culture medium is not only a critical production input but also a major cost-driver, estimated to contribute to 31–99 % of CM production costs at scale. Typical culture media optimized for biomedical applications are unsuitable for CM due to their high costs and their reliance on animal-derived components such as serum, which is poorly chemically-defined. Scope and approach: Here, we review recent advancements in culture media development for bovine, chicken, and porcine CM applications and propose a first principles approach for cost-effective CM media development. Key findings and conclusions: The majority of efforts to reduce media costs by eliminating serum, optimizing growth factors, and replacing animal-derived components with alternatives including from recombinant sources have fallen short of achieving stable long term cultures with optimal cell proliferation and differentiation rates to achieve high quality CM biomass. Our current understanding of the roles of key media components such as glucose, lipids, growth factors, and hormones is limited, which is prolonging much needed cost-effective innovations in CM media. We propose investigating and prioritizing essential components for CM-specific cell physiology and metabolism while eliminating unnecessary additives, then employing technoeconomic analysis for further optimization towards scale-up production. This targeted approach can help create cost-effective serum- or animal-free culture medium solutions to enable scalable CM production and help accelerate adoption of CM as a sustainable protein source.

  PublisherDOI

• Trends, challenges, and opportunities for the United States alternative meat and seafood sector: stakeholder-informed perspectives

  npj Science of Food · 2026-04-17

  articleOpen access

  Growing global protein demand has fueled innovation and investment in alternative protein (AP) products, including plant-based, fermentation-derived, and cell-cultivated products. Through interviews with AP stakeholders in the United States (U.S.), we explored the sector's evolution, challenges, opportunities, and trends. Interviewees described a boom from 2009 to 2021 followed by a decline, which the sector is now working to reverse. Achieving taste and price parity, attracting a broad consumer base, producing at scale, and navigating a charged policy environment remain key sector challenges. Looking forward, stakeholders were optimistic, noting opportunities including collaborations within and across sectors; workforce development; innovative financing, scalability models, and products; and increased policy engagement. Findings indicate that the U.S. AP sector is at a critical inflection point. This study points to future research, financing, and innovation that could help AP products become a mainstay in the food system.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The challenges of co-extraction of animal and plant proteins from transgenic plants for use in food and feed

  Frontiers in Plant Science · 2025-08-26

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Growing consumer awareness about health, environment, and animal welfare has pressured the food industry to be less reliant on animal proteins consumed as a whole product or formulated into a variety of foods. While recognizing the benefits of complete animal proteins, consumers are increasingly adding plant-based meat-, dairy-, seafood-, and egg-alternatives to diversify their diets. However, these alternatives still lack quality, flavor, and textural characteristics animal protein consumers are accustomed to. The challenges in producing affordable, sensorily acceptable plant-based protein products begin at harvest and in the initial extraction processes. This review highlights the current state-of-the-art in plant protein extraction and then relates these to potential challenges and opportunities in molecular farming wherein animal genes are inserted into plants to produce animal proteins. Plant protein quality is influenced by plant characteristics, environmental and climatic influences, harvesting, and the initial extraction steps. Many of these steps are well understood by actors across the food supply chain. As society begins preparing for large increases in protein demand over the next two decades, molecular farming has the potential to create novel protein offerings with higher nutritional quality, especially when the animal proteins are co-extracted with plant proteins, to meet consumer expectations. Bio-chemical/pharma industries have pursued animal protein extraction from transgenic plants for three decades, but efforts to produce food protein concentrates and isolates containing both animal and plant proteins are nascent, with most work accomplished in laboratories. We propose considerations to progress this technology from laboratories to commercial scale and highlight the importance of communication and education across the food supply chain, including regulators and policy makers, for acceptance and success of these novel products. There will undoubtedly be resistance, but perseverance to answer many questions needs to be recognized in preparation for meeting the rapid protein demand.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exploring the U.S. regulatory and legislative landscapes for cell-cultivated meat and seafood

  Trends in Food Science & Technology · 2025-12-31 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Non-destructive quality monitoring of 3D printed tissue scaffolds via dielectric impedance spectroscopy and supervised machine learning

  UNC Libraries · 2025-05-22

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Low-dose intrapulmonary drug delivery device for studies on next-generation therapeutics in mice

  UNC Libraries · 2025-01-24

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Investigating Autoregressive and Machine Learning-based Time Series Modeling with Dielectric Spectroscopy for Predicting Quality of Biofabricated Constructs

  UNC Libraries · 2025-04-26

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Digital light processing (DLP) bioprinting of collagen-riboflavin hydrogels for cultivated meat applications☆

  Manufacturing Letters · 2025-08-01

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  The increasing need for sustainably sourced nutritious food and challenges associated with traditional livestock farming have catalyzed research into sustainable proteins such as cultivated meats. However, achieving scalability and biofunctionality in cultivated meat requires significant advancements in biomanufacturing technologies. Towards this, high throughput additive manufacturing processes such as digital light processing (DLP) bioprinting can enable rapid fabrication of cell-supportive scaffolds through light-induced crosslinking. This study investigates DLP bioprinting of an edible collagen-riboflavin bioink (8 mg/mL type I collagen with 0.1 % riboflavin) as a potential approach for cultivated meat production. In particular, rheological, mechanical, and biological properties of the hydrogel were assessed to understand its suitability for cultivated meat applications. Storage modulus (G’) and loss modulus (G’’) of the bioprinted hydrogel (49.8 ± 2.26 Pa and 14.9 ± 1.02 Pa, respectively) were found to be significantly higher than those of the collagen-only control (12.2 ± 1.07 Pa and 8.43 ± 0.55 Pa, respectively) (both p < 0.05), while its loss tangent (0.30 ± 0.02) was significantly lower than the control (0.69 ± 0.01) ( p < 0.05). Compressive modulus (1933 ± 175 Pa) and the maximum compressive stress (243 ± 24 kPa) of the bioprinted hydrogel were significantly higher than those of the collagen control (1067 ± 251 Pa and 152 ± 18 kPa, respectively) (both p < 0.05), which were in the same range of magnitude as raw chicken breast (3567 ± 380 Pa and 366 ± 57 kPa, respectively). Finally, the bioprinted collagen-riboflavin constructs containing fibroblast cells demonstrated significant increases in live cell density (from 860 ± 95.39 cells/mm 2 to 2647 ± 210 cells/mm 2 ) and live cell area (from 0.06 ± 0.01 mm 2 to 0.264 ± 0.03 mm 2 ) (both p < 0.01) along with increased metabolic activity (from 42.5 ± 2.41 % to 64.3 ± 3.5 %) ( p < 0.05) over four days in culture. Taken together, the outcomes of this study highlight the potential of DLP bioprinting of collagen-riboflavin for cultivated meat applications.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: 3D-Biofabrication of hASC-based Biomimetic Osteochondral Tissue and the Role of Extracellular Calcium Receptor

  NSF · $204k · 2017–2022

• CAREER: Ultrasound-Assisted Biofabrication Of Biomimetic Soft Tissue Constructs With Aligned Fiber Organization

  NSF · $500k · 2017–2023

Frequent coauthors

• Binil Starly

  24 shared

• Lokesh Karthik Narayanan

  North Dakota State University

  21 shared

• Matthew B. Fisher

  North Carolina State University

  17 shared

• Parth Chansoria

  ETH Zurich

  16 shared

• Pedro Huebner

  University of Oklahoma

  15 shared

• Richard A. Wysk

  North Central State College

  14 shared

• Liliana F. Mellor

  14 shared

• Karl G. Schuchard

  North Carolina State University

  13 shared

Education

• PhD, Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering

  Pennsylvania State University

  2011

• MS, Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering

  Pennsylvania State University

  2007

• BE, Production Engineering

  University of Mumbai

  2005

Awards & honors

• NSF CAREER Award
• SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award
• SME Distinguished Faculty Advisor Award
• IISE Manufacturing & Design Outstanding Young Investigator A…
• C. A. Anderson Outstanding Faculty Award