Mitchell H. Maloy is a PhD student in the Dept. of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the Univ. at Buffalo (UB). He graduated Cum Laude with his BS in biological engineering from Cornell Univ. in 2016, where he worked in the laboratory of Professor Carl Batt in the Dept. of Food Science. His research focus was on the production of recombinant proteins utilizing Pichia pastoris, and he coauthored a publication in Biotechnology Progress in 2016, which focused on the optimization of virus-like particle production in P. pastoris. He was awarded the Presidential Fellowship in 2017 when he enrolled in the PhD program at UB. Diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) in 2003, Maloy experiences firsthand what it means to be a patient, and this has motivated him to develop new diagnostics and therapies for this problem. His research interests lie in the field of stem cell bioengineering, specifically cellular engineering in pluripotent stem cells (PSCs). PSCs possess the ability to differentiate into any cell in the body; therefore, they have the potential to be used for islet replacement therapies for curing T1DM. However, there are no PSC-based islet cell therapies for T1DM, likely due to problems with cell death, cell heterogeneity, and cell maturity. He wishes to address these problems for his doctoral thesis.