Rebecca Wells is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University of Pennsylvania, with a secondary appointment in Bioengineering. She received her undergraduate degree from Yale, then a medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. After postdoctoral fellowships in Boston with Matthias Hediger and Harvey Lodish, she established her own program, initially at Yale; she has now been at UPenn for more than 20 years. Although trained as a physician, Dr. Wells’s career has focused on basic research aimed at understanding the role of matrix and mechanical factors, interacting with soluble factors, in the progression of disease, in particular the response to injury. Using the liver and biliary tree as model tissues, she collaborates widely with colleagues in bioengineering, mechanical engineering, and materials science to understand how mechanical factors drive disease. In line with this approach, Dr. Wells is a co-director of the NSF Science and Technology Center for Engineering MechanoBiology, which endeavors to bring together biological and physical scientists to understand mechanobiology across the plant and animal kingdoms.