Alumni Spotlight: Erika Moore

As a child, Erika Moore, Engr ‘13, noticed that her body—and those of her siblings—responded differently to injuries and medication, an early observation that sparked a lifelong scientific interest in understanding how individual backgrounds influence disease experiences.

Now an assistant professor in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, Moore uses a tissue model to analyze patients’ immune cells, examining how inflammation varies based on an individual’s environment and body. Her goal as an equity bioengineer is to understand why lupus, an autoimmune disease, disproportionally impacts women of color.

A recently named TED Fellow, she focused her talk on this work linking patients’ backgrounds—including their race and sociocultural experiences—to the progression of their disease.

“90% of lupus patients are women and, of that, about 70% are women of color, so we have to consider that. It should be a variable,” said Moore.

In recent studies, Moore and her team found that African American women with lupus have more cell inflammation than European women with the same disease, supporting her theory that a person’s background can impact how the body responds to disease. She hopes to answer questions like “What if we could cure autoimmune illnesses by accounting for disease differences based on your background?” or “What if we could prevent excessive fibrosis by tailoring your immune cells to respond differently to injury?”

Moore’s research journey started as a Hopkins undergraduate in biomedical engineering, where she studied cell culture under Warren Grayson, the Morton F. Goldberg Professor. She credits the BME department’s strong mentorship culture for helping her understand the possibilities available through the study of biomedical engineering.

“I am so profoundly grateful for the BME program and for all of the titans who helped shape my fundamental knowledge in BME,” she said.

Moore earned her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University in 2018. She returned to Hopkins as a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow of Biomedical Engineering and worked under Jennifer Elisseeff in the Translational Tissue Engineering Center from 2018 to 2020. She joined the University of Maryland College Park in 2023.

She has received numerous awards, including an NSF CAREER award (2023); the 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award (2024, 2023, and 2022); the BMES Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award (2022); and the NIH R35 Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (2022). She made Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Healthcare list in 2021.

“There are not that many women of color who are assistant professors who run research programs. I think my lived experiences made me more likely to ask these questions. If we pay a little bit more attention to the details, I think we can easily build a more equitable healthcare system for everyone. That’s my goal,” she said.

Photo Credit: TED / Ryan Lash