Dr. Plikus received his Ph.D. degree in Pathology from the University of Southern California, where he worked with Dr. Cheng-Ming Chuong and carried out studies on the mechanism of large-scale stem cell coordination. Later he joined Dr. George Cotsarelis at the University of Pennsylvania to work on the reprograming mechanism for wound-induced regeneration. Dr. Plikus is currently a professor in the Department of Developmental and Cell Biology at the University of California, Irvine. The Plikus’ lab is interested to understand how complex tissues, such as skin, regenerate under normal conditions and in response to injury. Another goal of his lab is to understand how novel tissue-level morphologies and functions in skin evolve through repurposing existing morphogenetic modules.