Dr. Marcia Simon

Prof. Marcia Simon has a distinguished career in skin biology. After obtaining her PhD in Biochemistry from Brandeis University, she trained with Prof. Howard Green at MIT and Harvard Medical School, where she participated in one of the world's first uses of autologous bioengineered skin graft trials for the treatment of extensive burn injuries. At Stony Brook, Dr. Simon served as Graduate Program Director in Oral Biology and Pathology, Chair of the Graduate Council, member of the executive board of the Suffolk County Volunteer Firefighters Burn Center Fund, and Director of the Living Skin Bank, where she directed research in skin tissue engineering, wound healing, and burn injuries. She made seminal contributions in understanding the impact of retinoids and their metabolism in epidermal keratinocytes as a means of regulating epidermal function and tissue homeostasis. Her research has been supported with over $10 million in industry awards (Unilever, Pfizer, Transkaryotic Therapies, Advanced BioHealing) and grants from the US Army, (USAMRAA, USDOA), the National Institute of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the New York State Department of Health.

Prof. Simon directs a team of scientists, post-doctoral associates, and graduate students conducting research in two areas. First is modern skin tissue engineering and the regulation of epidermal homeostasis. This work together with that on epithelial cell senescence is revealing mechanistic insights into skin aging and solar UV damage. Through her involvement with the Stony Brook University Engineering Medicine Initiative, she is also exploring bioprinting technologies to make personalized, autologous skin grafts, and to study the impact of environmental factors on the skin. Second, in collaboration with the Department of Materials Science and Chemical Engineering, she conducts research on tooth regeneration with a focus on factors affecting mineralization, dental pulp stem cell differentiation, and the materials/ECM interaction. Most recently, Dr. Simon is participating with a Stony Brook University Covid-19 research team, which in collaboration with the Institute of Advanced Computational Sciences, employs High-Performance Computing Machine Learning and Cloud technologies to understand the infectivity of Covid-19 and possible variants and which in collaboration with the Tandon School of Engineering, NYC, produces sequence-specific molecularly imprinted point of care detection systems, and develops anti-viral surface treatments.