Dr. Sara Nunes Vasconcelos, Ph.D. is a Scientist at the University Health Network in the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute. She holds an Associate Professor appointment at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and a cross-appointment at the Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology at the University of Toronto. Her translational research program aims to develop regenerative medicine strategies and to use bioengineering approaches to study cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Her lab has developed new vascularization techniques to support functional tissues for organ regeneration and is pioneering the work to create mature vessels with specific arterio-venous identities in pre-vascularized, 3D-engineered tissues. Her work on human cardiac tissues-on-a-dish, named biowires, has opened a new area of research in human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte maturation and drug testing which catalyzed further mechanistic and translational research in this area worldwide. She received several awards for her work, including the prestigious Early Researcher Award from the Ministry of Research Innovation and Science in Canada, the Scientist Development Grant from the American Heart Association, USA, and most recently the Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the Microcirculatory Society and the Young Innovators in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Award, USA. She holds funding from CIHR, NSERC, CFREF, JDRF-CIHR, SCN, and the NFRF and serves as a reviewer for CIHR, NIH, and NASA.