As an undergraduate student in mechanical engineering at the University of Florida, Marc Levenston was intrigued by biomedical engineering but had only a basic biology background. His Ph.D. research atStanford focused on computer simulations of how mechanical stresses affect bone growth and adaptive changes around implants. He was doing biomechanics but "with a little 'b' and a big 'M'," he says. Wanting to pursue more experimental research, he headed to theMassachusetts Institute of Technology for a postdoc to join a lab of engineers who focused on cell and tissue culture experiments.