Megan Levis is a Bioengineering doctoral candidate at the University of Notre Dame. She investigates multi-scale coordination of cell communication and how it relates to changing mechanical properties of organs during development. To facilitate her interdisciplinary research, Levis has also developed rapid fabrication methods to create novel microfluidics that are low cost. Interested in the social ramifications of biotechnology and engineered multicellular systems, her research extends to consider the ethics of synthetic biology and systems bioengineering.

During her time at Notre Dame, Levis has held a number of fellowships relating to leadership and socially engaged research. She was a Graduate School Leadership Advancing Socially Engaged Research (LASER) Fellow, participated in the Reilly Center’s Social Responsibility of Researchers (SRR) Program, and has been a Center for Ethics and Culture Sorin Fellow for the past two years. She has led several programs aimed at the recruitment and retention of women in science and engineering, such as co-organizing an annual STEM career day for middle school girls, Notre Dame’s Expanding Your Horizons Conference, as well as chairing her department’s graduate and post-doctoral women’s network.

Levis’s research in the Zartman Lab has been supported by the National Institutes of Health, The National Science Foundation, and the University of Notre Dame. She is a current recipient of the Mara H. Wasburn Early Engineering Educator Grant from the American Society for Engineering Education. Her professional affiliations include the Biomedical Engineering Society, and The American Society for Engineering Education.