Kiara is a biomedical engineer and mad scientist using nanotechnology to create materials that mimic healthy brain tissue right down to the molecular level. She is researching possible new treatments for people affected by stroke. It’s part of an approach to medicine called tissue engineering, which uses stem cells to build new healthy body parts after damage form injury or disease. Stem cells have the potential to become any kind of cell, but they’re like teenagers: full of potential, but left to themselves… they’re lazy (#notallteenagers). To make stem cells to do something specific, tissue engineers draw on chemistry, biology, and physics to design materials to provide physical support and biological cues. Stem cells, like teenagers, are susceptible to peer pressure—if everything around them looks like brain tissue, they will want to fit in and become brain cells. It’s engineering on a molecular level, for impact on a human level.