Biography

Dr. Evangelia Bellas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Temple University. Prior to joining Temple University, Dr. Bellas was a postdoctoral fellow in Biomedical Engineering at Boston University and Bioengineering at University of Pennsylvania under the mentorship of Dr. Christopher Chen where she developed 3D in vitro adipose tissue disease models. She received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University mentored by Dr. David Kaplan. Her Ph.D. research focused on developing long-term volume stable silk biomaterials for soft tissue regeneration. This work resulted in 2 patents and a start-up. Before starting her Ph.D., Dr. Bellas was at Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Drs. Robert Langer and Daniel Kohane, where she worked on biomaterial, drug delivery solutions for prevention of peritoneal adhesions and controlled release formulations for long-term pain management. Her current research focuses on the development of fat-on-chip and (dys)functional adipose tissue models to study how vascularization and interactions with the microenvironment impact tissue health and function and funded by NIH, NASA, NSF, Lipedema Foundation and VentureWell. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (2021), Biomedical Engineering Society- Cell and Molecular Bioengineering Young Innovators Award (2021), Biomedical Engineering Society- Cell and Molecular Bioengineering Rising Star Award (2023) and the American Society for Matrix Biology- Junior Investigator Award (2023). She is an elected council member for Cell and Molecular Bioengineering Special Interest Group of the Biomedical Engineering Society.

Dr. Bellas is active in diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and served as the Biomedical Engineering Society’s Diversity Committee Chair (2019-2022), currently serving as an outgoing chair. She also serves as the elected vice-chair for the BME Council of Diversity Chairs.