Amelia Zellander, PhD is a bioengineer with extensive industry experience in medical device and pharmaceutical R&D. During her PhD studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, she created a cornea replacement technology that was submitted to the United States Patent and Trade Office for a patent filing. After completing her PhD, Dr. Zellander developed cell therapies and medical devices in R&D roles at Janssen R&D (a Johnson & Johnson company) and Imvax. In 2017, while working full-time as a scientist at a pharmaceutical company, Dr. Zellander initiated a cornea research project at Lehigh University. For the $42,700 Pennsylvania Department of Health award granted to Lehigh in 2021, Dr. Zellander was a co-investigator and key contributor to the completion of the grant application. In 2023, Dr. Zellander’s fundraising efforts yielded over $300,000 in funding. She won the $80,000 1st place prize in The Enterprise Center’s “Most Diverse Tech Hub” pitch competition in 2023. Also in 2023, BioLattice was awarded $274,000 in National Science Foundation SBIR Phase 1 funding. $25,000 in private investment was received in 2024. Fundraising and R&D efforts continue to support the company’s next pivotal milestone: demonstration of engineered cornea function in an animal model.