Rate My Professor Jaydee Cabral

Research Associate Professor Jaydee Cabral serves in the Department of Oral Rehabilitation, Faculty of Dentistry, Division of Health Sciences at the University of Otago. She holds a PhD and is a Member of the Royal Society of New Zealand (MRSNZ). Cabral established her laboratory in 2021 within the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and expanded it in 2025 to the Faculty of Dentistry. Her research adopts a multidisciplinary approach to develop medical devices, biomaterials, and bioengineered scaffolds. She focuses on enhancing biomaterial and bioink multifunctionality for delivering adult stem cells and other cell types, employing various 3D printing techniques to create in vivo-like 3D constructs for regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. Her laboratory features New Zealand's only GeSIM 3.1 Bioscaffolder, equipped for melt electrowriting, cold plasma, coaxial bioprinting, and piezoelectric applications. Cabral applies polymer synthesis, chemical and physical characterization, microbiological analysis, in vitro mammalian tissue culture, and in vivo models.

Cabral played a key role in a multi-million-dollar Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment-funded project, Smart Gels for Commercialisation, contributing to the development and characterization of Chitogel, an FDA-approved and commercialized post-operative surgical hydrogel. Current projects include Health Research Council Explorer and Lottery Health Research grants-funded 3D bioprinted vascularized regenerative living dressings for chronic wounds; a Royal Society Te Apārangi Catalyst Seed grant for 3D printing nipple-areolar complexes for breast cancer patients in collaboration with the University of Maryland; a Translation Research Grant for 3D printing medical devices to treat precancerous cervical lesions with Dunedin Hospital colleagues; and a $8.3 million MBIE Research Programme grant with the University of Auckland for inner ear drug delivery devices to treat hearing loss. She also received a Paykel Trust $10,000 grant-in-aid for plasma pen equipment. Key publications encompass Leonard et al. (2025), 'One-pot crosslinking enables 3D printing of shear-recovery fish collagen VEGF-functionalized inks' (Tissue Engineering Part A); O'Donnell et al. (2025), 'Plasma surface modification of 3D printed scaffolds for neurovascularized nipple-areolar complexes' (Tissue Engineering Part A); Cabral et al. (2024), 'A hybrid 3D additive manufacturing approach for engineering branched vasculature' (Tissue Engineering Part A); and Leonard et al. (2024), 'Impacts of novel crosslinking techniques and sterilisation treatments on marine fish skin collagen extracts for biomedical applications' (NZIC Conference Proceedings). She teaches BIOE 403, BIOE 405, and BIOE 495.