About Joanne

Joanne Manaster is a Laboratory Teaching Specialist, lecturer and consultant at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Bioengineering and Department of Cell and Developmental Biology.  While she used to do research in her graduate years, Joanne discovered that she was quite good at explaining science and teaching awesome scientific techniques and skills to non-technical and semi-technical audiences, and thus eschewed the life of a grant writing researcher to be able to help others learn to do their research with the latest possible techniques in the area of cell and molecular biology and tissue engineering.
Joanne is a hero with histology (studying the tissues of the body under a microscope), a maven at mammalian cell culture, magical with all types of microscopy (fluorescent, confocal, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, and of course, brightfield), and excels at cell and molecular biology! She employs all these skills to help students and other researchers work with stem cells, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. She believes in the ability of science to find new ways to keep our bodies healthy for a long, long time!
Joanne is a big advocate of  science outreach, offering her expertise for science fairs, the Illinois State (and National) Science Olympiad, as faculty coordinator for a Bioengineering camp aimed at middle school girls called Girls Adventures in Math and Engineering Sciences (GAMES). While these are reserved for the next generation, she also has self produced videos for anyone who cares to watch wherein she destroys gummi bears in scientific ways, recommends popular science books, and every once in a while discusses a beauty product from a scientific viewpoint.
She is a mother of four, an accomplished seamstress and then there’s that little thing about being a former international model….
Her website is aptly name “Joanne Loves Science”