Research in Prof. Hwang’s laboratory is directed toward investigating how the engineered microenvironments direct the cell function and tissue regeneration. More specifically, we are interested in 1) general aspect of non-viral gene delivery strategies to generate induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from somatic cells, 2) synthetic multiscale microfabrication technologies to control the fate and commitment of stem cells toward the desired tissues, 3) cell and molecular biology to study the mechanisms by which soluble and in-soluble signals are sensed by cells to modulate their cell fate determination. In addition, we desire to develop new bioactive materials to investigate the biomaterials-directed tissue repair.