The Shea Lab works at the intersection of regenerative medicine, immune engineering, and precision health. For regenerative medicine, biomaterials combined with drug and gene delivery are applied to control the local microenvironment for directing tissue growth or regeneration. His projects include islet transplantation for diabetes therapy and nerve regeneration for treating paralysis. Immune engineering is focused on strategies to modulate the unwanted immune responses, such as autoimmune diseases, allergies, inflammation, and allogeneic cell transplantation. Precision health research is developing strategies for the early detection of diseases, such as cancer or autoimmunity. Novel systems biology approaches are being applied to molecularly dissect normal and abnormal tissue functions to identify key drivers of either normal responses or disease progression.