Our Mission
Impact
The Hughes lab aims to understand disorders of tissue organization. We do this using cutting-edge techniques that synthesize principles of engineering and developmental biology. We seek to both understand the engineering rules by which tissues are formed within organisms, and to apply these rules to the construction of tissues that can be used in regenerative medicine or to model disease. Our lab’s approach includes developing new quantitative tools for cell and tissue analysis, and building computational and synthetic in vitro models. We evaluate our efforts through close in vivo observation and validation. We aim to contribute a bedrock of scientific understanding that will inform new therapeutic strategies tackling under-studied congenital diseases.
Values
The Hughes lab values the diverse backgrounds and perspectives of our team members as we work to achieve common goals and fulfill our lab mission. We are committed to scientific training, which removes barriers to innovation through a supportive and inclusive lab environment. We welcome and support all those striving for scientific excellence, on their individual learning curves. We believe that a key component of scientific excellence is choosing hard problems to solve, and tackling them with intellectual freedom. The ‘scientific method’ is testing if a well-reasoned idea is more likely to be wrong than right. We believe that the scientific method is best practiced through working with others, training each other, rigor, transparency, curiosity, and boldness - a spirit of adventure in the face of uncertainty and new possibilities.
