Perla Ayala

Perla Ayala, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department at California State University, Long Beach.

Ayala's research focuses on developing therapeutic systems that promote optimal healing. Her research applies a multidisciplinary approach to create engineered tissues, and cohesive drug delivery platforms for applications in the clinic. During her graduate studies, Dr. Ayala developed bioengineered microstructures for cardiac repair that improve cardiac functional outcomes after a heart attack in the rat model. She recently engineered a stem cell laden composite tissue system for applications in tissue regeneration that promotes the growth of new blood vessels and modulation of the immune response.

Ayala holds a Ph.D., in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Francisco. She was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.