Faculty Profile

Victoria G. Muir

Assistant Professor

Education

Post-doctorate – 2024 Princeton University
Doctorate – 2022 University of Pennsylvania
Bachelors – 2018 University of Delaware

About Victoria Muir

Prof. Victoria Muir started as an Assistant Professor at University of Delaware Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in Fall 2024. She completed her doctoral degree in 2022 as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania in the lab of Prof. Jason Burdick (now at Colorado – Boulder). Subsequently she pursued postdoctoral studies at Princeton University Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Prof. Sujit Datta (now at Caltech). She received her B.ChE. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware in 2018.

The Muir Lab designs soft and living materials at the microscale. Our work centers on developing hydrogel-based platforms, bioprinting strategies, and biofabrication techniques to create structured, dynamic, and tunable materials that interface with biology. We specialize in using microstructured hydrogels to control the spatial and mechanical properties of materials, enabling precise manipulation of cell-material interactions and engineered biological systems. Our approach integrates real-time imaging, materials characterization, and cell culture to advance the design of functional biomaterials for applications in tissue repair, therapeutic delivery, in vitro methodology, environmental microbiology, and biofabrication. We also embrace a “maker culture” by developing user-friendly, economical biomaterials research tools to expand accessibility and accelerate innovation in the field. Through engineering microscale architectures and dynamic soft materials, we aim to push the boundaries of biomaterials design for biomedical and environmental applications.

Current areas of research include (1) Designing materials to study cell movement in complex environments; (2) Engineering dynamic and stimuli-responsive biomaterials; (3) Designing microenvironments to study host-pathogen interactions in three dimensions; and (4) Building microscale living materials from functional microbes and hydrogels.

Select Publications

For a complete listing of publications, please view the Full CV.

V.G. Muir, M. Fainor, B.S. Orozco, R.L. Hilliard, M. Boyes, H.E. Smith, R.L. Mauck, T.P. Schaer, J.A. Burdick, S.E. Gullbrand. “Injectable Radiopaque Hyaluronic Acid Granular Hydrogels for Intervertebral Disc Repair”, Advanced Healthcare Materials, 2024, 2303326
V.G. Muir, S. Weintraub, A.P. Dhand, H. Fallahi, L. Han, J.A. Burdick. “Influence of Microgel and Interstitial Matrix Compositions on Granular Hydrogel Composite Properties”, Advanced Science, 2023, 10 (10), 2206117
V.G. Muir, T.H. Qazi, S. Weinstraub, B. Moldanado, P. Arratia, and J.A. Burdick. “Sticking Together: Injectable Granular Hydrogels with Increased Functionality via Dynamic Covalent Inter-particle Crosslinking”, Small, 2022, 18, 6, 2201115
V.G. Muir, M.E. Prendergast, and J.A. Burdick, “Fragmenting Bulk Hydrogels and Processing into Granular Hydrogels for Biomedical Applications”, J. Vis. Exp. , 2022, 183, e63867
V.G. Muir, T.H. Qazi, J. Shan, J. Groll, J.A. Burdick, “Influence of Microgel Fabrication Technique on Granular Hydrogel Properties”, ACS Biomater. Sci. Eng., 2021, 7, 9, 4269–4281

Awards

For a complete listing of awards, please view the Full CV.

AIChE 35 Under 35 Award, 2023
Solomon R. Pollack Award for Excellence in Graduate Bioengineering Research, University of Pennsylvania, 2023
Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Princeton University, 2022
Penn Prize for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, University of Pennsylvania, 2020
National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, University of Pennsylvania, 2019
Poddar Award for Rising Star in Chemical Engineering, AIChE, 2019
Barry Goldwater Scholarship, University of Delaware, 2016