The Biomedical Engineering Program (BME) at CU Boulder may be relatively young, but its graduates are already making their mark across the country.

And for some, that means helping shape the next generation of biomedical engineers. 

Three recent PhD graduates have traded their roles as students for faculty positions at other universities, where they’re leading cutting-edge research and carving out academic careers of their own. Their success highlights the growth of the program and its expanding influence beyond campus.

Read more about these graduates, their work and their incredible journeys below.

 

Lukas Buecherl

Assistant Professor

Buecherl has always been a curious person who is constantly questioning how things work. That’s what led him to pursue a PhD in biomedical engineering and a career in research.

But in middle school, he also realized he had another passion.

“I always enjoyed teaching and explaining things to others,” Buecherl said. “During high school I had opportunities to teach and tutor that made me realize how much I enjoyed helping people understand something new.”

Today, Buecherl is combining his education and his love for teaching as an assistant professor in the Biological and Chemical Engineering Department at Utah State University’s College of Engineering. His research focuses on making biology programmable by developing computational and experimental approaches to design, analyze and predict the behavior of engineered biological systems.

“Unlike conventional engineered systems, biological systems operate through molecular interactions that are stochastic, context-dependent, and inherently variable, making it difficult to predict whether a biological design will behave as intended,” said Buecherl. “My work addresses this challenge through reliable biological computation, where I study how stochasticity, molecular timing and cellular context affect genetic and RNA circuits, and biological design automation. From there, I develop computational tools, standards and workflows that make biological design more systematic, reproducible and scalable.”

During his time in Boulder, Buecherl studied under Professor Chris Myers in the Genetic Logic Lab. He says the mentorship and support he received from that group and the broader program is what propelled him into his role today.

“Dr. Chris Myers gave me the independence and support I needed to do strong research, while also helping me make fantastic connections across the synthetic biology and bioengineering communities,” Buecherl said. “Dr. Corey Neu took the time to meet with me and help me prepare for my faculty interviews, which was incredibly valuable when I was going through the job search. 

“Now that I am here, I really enjoy that combination. I get to be curious for a living, work on problems that interest me, and help students develop into scientists and engineers themselves.”

 

Kaitlin McCreery

Assistant Professor

McCreery’s path through CU Boulder was highly interdisciplinary.

She worked under Professor Corey Neu in the Neu Lab studying problems that sit at the intersection of engineering, cell biology, mechanics and chromatin biology. 

“How do cells sense changes in their physical environment? How do they adapt to those changes and how do those experiences alter cell identity?” McCreery asked. “Answering questions like these requires more than applying tools from one field—it requires bringing different ways of thinking together and building new experimental approaches around the biology.”

McCreery currently serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Vermont’s College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences. Her work focuses on how mechanical forces and the extracellular matrix shape cell identity, particularly during fibrosis and regeneration.

“My lab studies how physical signals are transmitted from tissues to the nucleus, reshaping chromatin and gene regulation to ultimately influence cell fate. We are especially interested in how transient biophysical cues can have lasting effects: when they are “remembered” and lock cells into persistent pathological states, and how they can coordinate groups of cells to transition together into new cell states during regeneration,” said McCreery. “Our long-term goal is to understand how extracellular cues drive both disease progression and regeneration, and to find ways to redirect these processes toward repair in cardiac and musculoskeletal tissues.”

Now, McCreery says she values being a mentor to a group of trainees as they “develop their own scientific identities and learn to move confidently across disciplinary boundaries.” She traces that passion for interdisciplinary problem-solving back to her PhD training in Boulder.

However, she also credits the BME program’s growth during her time at CU Boulder with shaping how she thinks about academic programs and her own role as a faculty member.

“Watching the program develop helped me appreciate that academic training programs are built by passionate faculty with a shared vision. This perspective has been especially valuable as a junior faculty member helping to shape biomedical engineering research and education at UVM,” McCreery said. “I came away from Boulder with the technical breadth to build an interdisciplinary research program, a sense of where science is headed, and the confidence to create something new.”

 

Emily Miller

Assistant Professor

Like McCreery, Miller also worked in the Neu Lab during her PhD time in Boulder. She’s currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Utah, and is slated to join UC Berkeley’s Department of Mechanical Engineering in January 2027.

But unlike some of her fellow PhD graduates, Miller wasn’t always sure that a faculty career was the right path for her.

“While in the BME program, I was part of a large, supportive and well-established lab, so I didn’t really know what it looked like to start a lab from the ground up,” said Miller. “When I came to Utah, I joined a brand-new lab and getting to see that process from the very beginning gave me a much better sense of what it takes to build a research program.”

Miller’s research examines how mechanical forces shape joint health, from individual tissues to whole-body movement. By linking these scales, she aims to detect joint disease sooner and prevent injury and long-term degeneration.

“This work includes the first methods to measure cartilage stiffness in living people with MRI, which show how early changes in cartilage relate to pain and function after ACL reconstruction,” Miller said. “Across these scales, my goal is to build tools that detect meaningful changes before irreversible joint damage occurs and carry those measurements into clinical care to improve patient outcomes.”

Similar to McCreery, Miller has fallen in love with the interdisciplinary nature of her work over time. She credits CU Boulder’s BME program for instilling that foundation and informing her future.

“My PhD work brought together engineering, imaging, biomechanics and musculoskeletal health. Instead of staying constrained to one specific area, I learned how to work across them all,” Miller said. “That training shapes how I approach research today and the cross-disciplinary questions my own lab will pursue.”