Keisuke Ishihara, PhD

Keisuke received his BSE in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University. For his PhD in Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, he trained with Tim Mitchison in quantitative cell biology and biochemical reconstitution, using frog egg extract to elucidate how large microtubule asters grow to span millimeter-sized cells, position the spindle, and coordinate cell division. He then trained as a postdoctoral fellow with Elly Tanaka at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, co-advised by Jan Brugues and Frank Jülicher at the Max Planck Institutes in Dresden, where he established neuroepithelial organoids as an experimental model, and developed predictive mechanical theory for tissue topology. He joined the University of Pittsburgh as an Assistant Professor in 2022.

His research takes a synthetic approach to studying how cells form tissues. By engineering tissues with extreme states of physical organization and gene expression, his lab discovers regulatory molecules, dormant genetic programs, and general physical principles that guide organ development. The lab focuses on cardiac and brain organoids, combining advanced microscopy, computation, physical theory, and molecular tools.

Keisuke teaches the core graduate course on Cellular, Systems, and Molecular Modeling in the CMU–Pitt PhD Program in Computational Biology, and co-directs the CompBio site of the UPMC Hillman Academy, a summer research program for local high school students. He is a recipient of the American Heart Association Career Development Award (2025–2028).