TAMEST Profile: Protégé Poster Challenge Grand Prize Winner Teja Guda, Ph.D., The University of Texas at San Antonio

Earlier this month, Teja Guda, Ph.D., Jacobson Distinguished Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), won the Grand Prize at the TAMEST 2025 Annual Conference Poster Challenge. Dr. Guda was one of 43 TAMEST Protégés to participate in the annual TAMEST Protégé Poster Challenge, presented by Shell, and was one of four contest finalists invited to present their poster on stage at the conference.

Dr. Guda’s research focuses on developing regenerative strategies and engineering tools for tissue engineering, specifically for musculoskeletal tissue substitutes. His work explores how mechanical stimulation in bioreactors and substrate compliance influence stem cell behavior, aiming to improve tissue regeneration. Using advanced imaging techniques like micro-CT, he studies scaffold structures and their mechanical properties to enhance graft efficacy in regenerative applications.

Dr. Guda’s poster and presentation, “Next Generation Biomaterials Ease Upper Airway Rehabilitation: Save your Voice, Breathe Free,” won him a gift card and a complimentary registration to attend the TAMEST 2026 Annual Conference next year in San Antonio. In addition to time on the conference stage, Dr. Guda and the three other finalists also attended an exclusive breakfast meeting with TAMEST leadership and special guests, including Nobel Laureate Johann Deisenhofer, Ph.D. (NAS), UT Southwestern Medical Center and The Honorable Kay Bailey Hutchison, TAMEST Honorary Chair; Former United States Senator; Former United States Ambassador to NATO.

TAMEST connected with Dr. Guda to hear more about his groundbreaking research and participation as a TAMEST Protégé.

Please tell us a little about yourself and your work.  

I have been a faculty member in biomedical engineering and chemical engineering at UTSA for the past 15 years and work in developing biomaterials for tissue engineering, trying to leverage tissue mechanics and drug delivery to regenerate tissues after traumatic injury, mostly with applications in military medicine.

Some of the ongoing work in my lab includes improving the re-growth of blood vessels into bone grafts, figuring out if we can rehabilitate muscles after large volumes are lost by sustaining nerve connections and developing technology to prevent or at least minimize damage in the upper airway.

How did you first hear about TAMEST and its Protégé Program?

I first heard about TAMEST and the Protégé Program when I was nominated by Professor and TAMEST Board Member Rena Bizios, Ph.D. (NAM, NAE) as a Protégé in 2016.

Due to these nominations, I have had the opportunity to attend TAMEST annual conferences on multiple occasions since then, at various stages of my academic career. It has allowed me to learn about the absolutely amazing advances in the sciences, medicine, technology and engineering across Texas.

What made you decide to participate in the TAMEST Protégé Poster Challenge? 

This is my second time participating in the poster challenge. I can honestly say the experience of networking and sharing our work with other protégés and National Academy members, as well as university leadership, was a tremendous opportunity.

It made it an easy decision to participate again after a couple of years to share how far my research had developed!

Your poster was titled, “Next Generation Biomaterials Ease Upper Airway Rehabilitation: Save your Voice, Breathe Free.” Tell us about your findings. 

Whether it is patients suffering from smoke inhalation when caught in fires or military after battlefield trauma that impacts the airway, the first response is to make sure the airway hasn’t collapsed and a plastic tube called an endotracheal tube is placed (shoved) to ensure that the airway is held open during the emergency.

One of the major concerns, as we all learned during the pandemic when many patients were put on ventilators, is that recovery is very difficult when these tubes are removed after the primary trauma has been addressed. This is because all the muscles of the throat and the vocal cords have swollen up and been damaged by the plastic tube and don’t really function well.

To combat this, we designed a soft gel coating for the outside of the plastic tube to mimic the properties of the mucus we all generate to help in the process. The gel, which is held on by a fiber coating on the surface of the tube, now enables the tubes to glide along the airway during insertion and minimize damage.

Additionally, instead of needing clinicians to inject steroids to control swelling in the airway, we can now deliver those steroids from the fiber coatings themselves and keep the airway muscles healthy. We found out, though, in preclinical testing, that the airway has a lot of microbes that are opportunistic and take advantage of the tube being in place to grow out of control. We added additional antibiotics to the gel coating to keep that from happening.

We’ve now finished all the large animal testing to show that these new bioengineered coated tubes work well in the airway to preserve function after injury or hot smoke inhalation. We hope to commercialize the product to bring this value to patient care soon.

What makes you most passionate about your work?  

Our work brings together materials scientists, biomedical engineers and clinicians to create engineered tools that can speed up the healing of tissues after devastating injuries to not just heal but restore function.

Even more, as an engineer, seeing that the products and technology we are working on have the potential for very immediate impacts on the health and quality of life in a lot of people – both in military service and in the general public – is very rewarding. It is a constant source of inspiration for us to keep innovating.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that an entire team of trainees and collaborators (and mentors) makes this research and development happen. We are a very close-knit and passionate group, which I honestly like most about my “work”.

Talk about the research connections you made while attending the TAMEST conference and participating in the poster challenge. 

There were research connections and learning opportunities everywhere at the TAMEST conference, whether that be the tables we were sitting at to hear the sessions or the poster challenge. Within the poster challenge, walking around the posters and talking to everyone, some of whom were recent transplants to Texas, was nice. It was great to meet the people behind the science across the state.

Specifically, connections in the healthcare technology space, whether it be the discovery of new drugs or cool model systems that allow for new directions of research/technology to be developed, were the new best connections for me because they complement what I work on. What was unique was that as academic researchers, we don’t usually go to conferences or sessions with this level of domain variety and I found it to be very invigorating for trans-disciplinary thinking and potential collaborations.

As a finalist, you were able to present your research on the conference stage. What was that experience like? 

That experience was unexpected, to say the least. It was a great time to speak to a VERY broad audience about something very specific and that I was very passionate about. It felt like a TED talk on steroids.

I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and it also reinforced the feeling that science communication is a critical aspect of driving technology adoption. We have a responsibility to ensure that we bring our engineering innovations to the public domain through every channel at our disposal for societal benefit.

You also got to have a special breakfast with Nobel Laureate Johann Deisenhofer, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and TAMEST leadership. What did you get out of that opportunity?  

The special breakfast for the Poster Challenge finalists was a very unique experience. Mostly because of how special it was as an opportunity to share our work and hear their perspectives on the bigger picture, whether it be advocacy for the advancement of these pursuits across the state or the changes in the field as new innovations try to tackle age-old challenges.

It was an unforgettable experience that people of their accomplished statures truly cared to hear what we had to say and, even more, that they recognized and appreciated hearing it! 

What do you enjoy doing outside of your research? 

Outside of research, I love cooking all sorts of cuisines, reading books, traveling and challenging my 7-year-old to stuff before he turns the tables on me – all those in no particular order!