3D printer nozzle above a Petri dish with pink liquid, against a colorful laboratory background.

Shaping the Future

SNHU’s Campus Introduces Cutting-Edge Biofabrication Course
BY LAUREN MAYNARD ’17G
In the fall of 2024, Southern New Hampshire University’s campus started offering a new interdisciplinary special topics class in biofabrication. Assistant Professor of Biology Dr. Chelsi Beauregard teaches the course and described biofabrication as a type of biomanufacturing, “People who work in this field try to create tissues or organs from someone’s stem cells.”

Students enrolled in the biofabrication course were taught about research and development, biotech sales, quality control, cell biology, and regulatory affairs. In addition to learning the basics of cell culture through hands-on experiments, students also chose a disease that could benefit from the technology in order to design a plan to fix it.

Student William Brown stated, “The most interesting thing about the class is definitely the creation of the organ itself, because it’s very hard to find certain donors, especially for certain organs in the body, and if we’re able to create those organs artificially and give those to another person, it would be able to save a lot of lives.”

Community Partnerships: SNHU and Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI)

The course was developed as part of a grant with the Manchester, New Hampshire-based Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI)/BioFabUSA and was awarded by the Department of Defense. The class had the opportunity to visit ARMI and saw first-hand the facilities and technology used to attempt to make biofabricated organs and other biological products a reality for consumers. The partnership between SNHU and the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute does not end with this course—Dr. Chelsi Beauregard will be continuing her work with the institute as part of a fellowship. Additionally, three outstanding students from the inaugural class —Christia Coetzer, Kaitlyn White, and Karena Czzowicz—were chosen to continue on as interns at ARMI during the Spring 2025 semester.
“This course in biofabrication is part of the university’s commitment to expanding opportunities for students in healthcare fields.”
Dr. Katharine York,
Chair of the Department of Biological Sciences

Expanding Our Future

The biofabrication course is just the beginning for strengthening health science offerings at SNHU.

“It will be added to the list of major electives for students in biology and is expected to quickly generate new ideas and research opportunities for students in the future,” said Dr. Katharine York.

To support this growth in health sciences, the university is investing in new lab space that will be unveiled in Fall 2025.

Hear from Dr. Beuregard and students in the class
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