Position
Wilke Family Professor in Bioengineering

Role
Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering

Title
Director, Program in Engineering Biology

Office Phone
609-258-8851

Email
celesten@princeton.edu

Assistant
Pam Raney

Office
303 Hoyt Laboratory

Website
https://cmngroup.princeton.edu/

CV
nelson_cv.pdf

Degrees
Ph.D., Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 2003
S.B., Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998
S.B., Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1998

Advisee(s):
Molly Brennan
Payam Farahani
Katie Goodwin
Evelyn Navarro Salazar
Sarah Paramore




Bio/Description

Honors and Awards

Biodiversity Grand Challenge Award, High Meadows Environmental Institute, 2021
Mid-Career Award, Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), 2019
Blavatnik National Award Finalist for Young Scientists in Life Sciences, 2017, 2018
Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Faculty Scholar, 2016
American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows, 2016
President's Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2016
Distinguished Teacher Award, Princeton School of Engineering and Applied Science, 2014
Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, 2012
Allan P. Colburn Award, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 2011
Sloan Fellow, 2010
Packard Fellowship, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, 2008
Burroughs Wellcome Career Award at the Scientific Interface, 2007
DOD Breast Cancer Research Program Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2004

Affiliations

Associated Faculty, Department of Molecular Biology

Research Interests

Our group seeks to answer the following fundamental questions: How are the final architectures of tissues and organs determined? Specifically, how do individual cells -- the building blocks of these materials -- integrate complex biological signals (both biochemical and mechanical) dynamically and spatially within tissues to direct the development of organs?
The answers to these questions have broad ramifications, from understanding the fundamental mechanisms of development, to delineating the developmental control processes that are circumvented by cancer and other diseases, to elucidating new paradigms required for successful therapeutic approaches in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. Because of the complexity of the interacting pathways and three-dimensional (3D) nature of developing tissues, this problem requires an interdisciplinary approach, combining expertise from the cell biology, developmental biology, and engineering communities. Our group works at the interface of these disciplines, developing tools to engineer organotypic culture models that mimic tissue development, enabling rigorous quantitative analysis and computational predictions of the dynamics of morphogenesis. Our current focus is on sophisticated mammalian cell culture and mouse models of normal branching morphogenesis (ie, the developmental pr ocess that builds the lung, kidney, and mammary gland) and abnormal neoplastic growth.
Cellular cooperation within 3D tissues. How do cells cooperate and integrate to build complex tissue geometries, such as the branching architectures of the lung, kidney, and mammary gland? The most straightforward way to address this question would be to manipulate individual cells at specific locations within a tissue at will -- reproducibly and with high precision. We accomplish this by using microfabrication approaches to recreate 3D mammalian tissue architecture in culture. Current challenges include: (1) understanding the dynamics of individual cells during morphogenesis; (2) understanding the roles of different cell types within an organ during development; (3) defining the role of the cellular microenvironment in normal development and neoplastic progression.
Biochemical and mechanical signal integration. What signals determine final tissue geometry? Long-range communication between individual cells within a tissue is critical for determining pattern formation during morphogenesis. We have shown that pattern formation and symmetry breaking are determined in part by long-range transmission of mechanical stresses and autocrine morphogen gradients; these gradients are determined by the structure of the tissue, forming a feedback system during morphogenesis. We use experimental and computational approaches to determine the relative roles of morphogen and mechanical gradients during tissue development.

Selected Publications
Nelson C.M., Gleghorn J.P., Pang M.F., Jaslove J., Goodwin K., Varner V.D., Miller E., Radisky D.C., & Stone H.A. (2017) Microfluidic chest cavities reveal that transmural pressure controls the rate of lung development. Development, in 144: 4328-4335.
Kim H.Y., Pang M.F., Varner V.D., Kojima L., Miller E., Radisky D.C., & Nelson C.M. (2015) Localized smooth muscle differentiation is essential for epithelial bifurcation during branching morphogenesis of the mammalian lung. Dev. Cell, 34: 719-726.
Varner V.D., Gleghorn J.P., Miller E., Radisky D.C., & Nelson C.M. (2015) Mechanically patterning the embryonic airway epithelium. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 112: 9230-9235.
Gjorevski N., Piotrowski A.S., Varner V.D., & Nelson C.M. (2015) Dynamic tensile forces drive collective migration through three-dimensional extracellular matrices. Sci. Rep., 5: 11458.
Simi A.K., Anlas A.A., Stallings-Mann M., Zhang S., Hsia T., Cichon M., Radisky D.C., & Nelson C.M. (2018) A soft microenvironment protects from failure of midbody abscission and multinucleation downstream of the EMT-promoting transcription factor Snail. Cancer Res., 78: 2277-2289.

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Research Areas
Cellular and Tissue Engineering