Ryan Driskell

Kellen Chen, PhD, is an assistant research professor in the Department of Surgery and Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Arizona, College of Medicine – Tucson. He previously received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Virginia and earned his B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Chen completed his postdoctoral research fellowship at Stanford University.

Dr. Chen studies therapies to improve outcomes after injury, skin grafting, chronic wound development, biomedical device implantation, and more. Among these many research avenues, Dr. Chen is particularly interested in the molecular and cellular drivers of fibrosis and regeneration across all organ systems, and he previously studied healing after myocardial infarction or Achilles tendon injuries. He is also currently working on obtaining FDA approval for a clinical trial to study pharmacological inhibition of mechanical signaling to accelerate healing of deep dermal injury.

Dr. Chen has co-authored over 50 peer-reviewed publications and three book chapters, including first author publications in journals such as the Science Translational Medicine, Nature Communications, and PNAS. He has received a variety of awards, including the First Place Young Investigator’s Award from the Wound Healing Society.

Dr Tomic-Canic is a William H. Eaglstein Chair in Wound Healing, Vice chair of Research and Professor and the Director of Wound Healing and Regenerative Medicine Research Program at the Dr Phillip Frost Department of Dermatology and Cutanelous Surgery at the University Of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Her current research is focused on: molecular/cellular mechanisms of wound healing and its inhibition; developing new therapeutics and diagnostics; anti-inflammatory processes in wound healing and wound infection/host response. Her research has been continuously funded by the NIH for 25 years. Dr Tomic-Canic has participated in national scientific and clinical panels discussing the immense need for translational research areas to improve clinical outcomes of wound healing. She currently serves as a Section Editor for Journal of Investigative Dermatology and a Senior Editor of the Wound Repair and Regeneration Journals. She is recognized national and international leader and inventor in the field of wound healing research and was honored by NIH with WALS Lectureship. She served to Advisory Council of the NIH/NINR and was appointed to The Big Data to Knoledge Multi-Council Working Group. Very active member of the Wound Healing Society and Wound Care Collaborative COmmunity. She served as a WHS Program Chair in 2011, as a member of the Board of Directors, Executive Board and was the WHS President in 2016-2017. Her scientific contributions to the field of wound healing and her leadership were recognized by the 2022 Wound Healing Society's Lifetime Achievement Award and 2025 Distinguished Service Award.

Ryan R. Driskell, PhD, is an associate professor in the School of Molecular Biosciences at Washington State University and leads the Fibroblast and Skin Regeneration Laboratory. He trained as a cell and developmental biologist at the University of Iowa, where he earned his PhD studying Wnt signaling, and completed postdoctoral training with Fiona Watt at the University of Cambridge and King’s College London, defining fibroblast lineages that shape skin development and repair. His laboratory investigates how developmental programs can be reactivated so wounds regenerate rather than scar, integrating porcine wound models, single-cell and spatial genomics, and tissue biology. Recent work from his group, published in Nature, demonstrated that neonatal pig wounds can rebuild rete ridges and identified BMP signaling as a key regulator of this process. His work connects fundamental skin development with translational strategies for restoring durable, functional skin after injury and aging.