Peter Zandstra

Dr. Peter Zandstra is the Director of the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) School of Biomedical Engineering. He earned a BEng in Chemical Engineering from McGill University, a PhD in Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology from UBC, and undertook a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Bioengineering at MIT.

Dr. Zandstra’s work integrates engineering design principles, computational modeling, and stem cell biology to enhance our fundamental understanding of cell fate control mechanisms. His research focuses on developing new and accessible therapeutic approaches for disease treatment, particularly using cells from the blood-forming system to treat cancer and autoimmunity. Key discoveries from his lab include scalable suspension manufacturing of pluripotent stem cells and their derivatives, engineering an artificial thymic niche for clinically relevant ex vivo T-cell development, and elucidating fundamental mechanisms in human multicellular tissue pattern formation. Dr. Zandstra has received broad recognition for his work, including being named a Member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in Engineering.