Chris Moraes (he/him) loves mashing engineering, medicine, and biophysics together. His team of scientists research group at McGill designs and builds microscale versions of human tissues and organs, which can then be watched under the microscope to better understand development and disease. He’s grown particularly interested in how mechanical forces and biology interact, and uses these ideas to build better culture systems for drug discovery, biomimetic manufacturing platforms for therapies, and diagnostic tools to guide treatment decisions.

Chris has been around Shad for a while. He was a Shad himself (Acadia 2000), and has taken his summer holidays to teach at the Queen’s, Waterloo, and McGill programs since he was a graduate student in 2005. It’s grown into a family affair – he and his significantly better half, Stefanie Moraes (Shad Waterloo 2000) teach at Shad together whenever they can. Two out of three of their young kids have even been honorary program assistants (starting at the ages of 6 months!), living in residence and dispensing both advice and half-chewed carrots with reckless abandon.