Andrew Holle

Mechanobiology Institute - National University of Singapore

Dr. Andrew Holle is the Principal Investigator of the Confinement Mechanobiology lab at the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI) at the National University of Singapore. He received a Bachelor of Science, Engineering (B.S.E) from Arizona State University, where he worked in labs of Dr. Christine Pauken and Dr. Deirdre Meldrum. He then received his Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego, where he worked in Dr. Adam Engler’s Stem Cell Biology and Bioengineering group. There, he identified the mechanosensitive role of the focal adhesion protein vinculin in substrate stiffness-induced stem cell differentiation. He then joined Prof. Joachim Spatz’s Cellular Biophysics group at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research (Stuttgart, Germany). There, he used photolithography and microfluidics to build microchannel assays to better characterize cancer cell invasion and migration in confinement. His group’s work at MBI and in the NUS Biomedical Engineering department focuses on the role of confinement in mechanobiology, with an emphasis on novel strategies for controlling stem cell differentiation.