Rate My Professor Shelly Peyton

Shelly Peyton serves as Provost Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering in the Riccio College of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a position she holds while on leave for the 2025/26 academic year. She joined UMass Amherst in 2011 after completing her postdoctoral fellowship in Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Peyton received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Irvine in 2007, MS from the same institution in 2004, and BS from Northwestern University in 2002. Throughout her tenure at UMass, she has taken on significant leadership roles, including Graduate Program Director for Chemical Engineering, Chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, and Co-Director of the Models to Medicine Center within the Institute for Applied Life Sciences. Her contributions to teaching were recognized with the Outstanding Teaching Award from the College of Engineering in 2018. Peyton was also named the Armstrong Professional Development Professor in 2020 for a three-year term and received the Samuel F. Conti Faculty Fellowship Award in 2022.

The research in the Peyton Lab centers on engineering biomaterials to elucidate how various cell types interpret biochemical and biophysical signals from the extracellular matrix (ECM) to make decisions about migration, phenotype, and fate. This work has particular applications in understanding breast cancer metastasis—why it spreads to specific organs like bone, liver, and brain—tumor dormancy and drug resistance, traumatic brain injury mechanics, cardiovascular disease, and stem cell therapeutics. By creating 2D and 3D biomaterial platforms that mimic native tissue environments, her team studies cancer cell behaviors and brain tissue responses to mechanical forces. Peyton's efforts have secured over $13 million in funding from 24 sources, with $6.35 million directly supporting her group, leading to more than 48 peer-reviewed publications, three patents, and over 6,000 citations. Notable publications include "Extracellular matrix rigidity governs smooth muscle cell motility in a biphasic fashion" (Journal of Cellular Physiology, 2005), "The use of poly(ethylene glycol) hydrogels to investigate the impact of ECM chemistry and mechanics on smooth muscle cells" (Biomaterials, 2006), "The effects of matrix stiffness and RhoA on the phenotypic plasticity of smooth muscle cells in a 3-D biosynthetic hydrogel system" (Biomaterials, 2008), and "Mechanics of intact bone marrow" (Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, 2015). She has presented over 65 invited talks and keynotes. Among her honors are the NIH Director's New Innovator Award, Pew Biomedical Scholar (2013), NSF CAREER Award, Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2020), Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society (2021), and Provost Professor honorific (2023).