Dr. Tracy Cui is the William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh and the Director of the Neural Tissue/Electrode Interface and Neural Tissue Engineering Laboratory. She is also a faculty member of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

Dr. Cui earned her B.E. in Polymer Materials and Chemical Engineering and her M.S. in Biophysics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. She went on to earn her Ph.D. in Macromolecular Science and Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She was a research scientist at Unilever Research from 2002 to 2003 before joining Pitt Bioengineering in August 2003.

Dr. Cui’s research lies at the intersection of biomaterials and neural engineering, with a focus on developing innovative neural interface technologies for comprehensive interrogation of the nervous system and the restoration of lost neurological functions. She pioneered the development of conductive polymer coatings for neural electrode arrays—a breakthrough technology now widely adopted in both commercial neural probes and next-generation implantable and wearable electronics. Using a multidisciplinary approach, her work explores the intricate interactions between neural tissues and materials, while simultaneously advancing materials and device technology that can seamlessly integrate within the neural tissue for neural recording, stimulation, drug delivery, biosensing, and neural tissue engineering.

For her work, Dr. Cui has won numerous awards and recognitions, including:

• 2024 Journal of Materials Research Distinguished Speaker

• 2023 Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors

• 2017 Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry

• 2016 Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering

• 2013 and 2014 Peking University Engineering Globex Fellow

• 2013 Carnegie Science Emerging Female Scientist Award

• 2009, 2011, and 2015 Pitt Innovator Award

• 2008 National Science Foundation Career Award

• 2005 Wallace Coulter Foundation Translational Early Career Award

Dr. Cui has published more than 143 peer-reviewed articles with over 15800 citations and a H-index of 66 (Google Scholar). She holds 9 granted U.S. patents with 4 patent applications pending. She is the chief scientific officer of Vanish Therapeutic, a company she co-founded to develop opioid-free, bioresorbable, non-surgical stimulators for pain relief. Vanish has received multiple accolades, including the 2021 Virginia Kaufman Pain Research Challenge Award, first place in the 2021 Well’s Pitch Competition, second place in the 2021 LifeX Life Sciences Accelerator, first place in the 2022 Pitt Innovation Challenge, and an NIH STTR award under the HEAL initiative. Dr. Cui serves as a reviewer for numerous journals and funding agencies and is on the editorial board of the Journal of Neural Engineering, Current Opinion in Biomedical Engineering, Journal of Materials Chemistry B, and Advanced NanoBiomed Research.