David Shreiber directs a diverse and interdisciplinary research program that examines brain and spinal cord injury mechanics at multiple scales as well as engineered cellular and biomaterial therapies to combat cell and tissue injury and enhance regeneration. Broadly, he aims to understand how tissue is damaged during trauma and how to repair, rehabilitate, or regenerate the tissue after injury.

Among his discoveries and technologies are: a quantitative estimation of in situ axon-level failure thresholds; novel microfluidic strategies to study axon guidance; the first scaffold that improves the accuracy of motor nerve regeneration; a photo-active and thermo-reversible, collagen-based biomaterial; tissue-engineered models to study mechanotransduction during acupuncture; and next-generation lab-on-a-chip electroporation devices. Recently, Shreiber and a team of collaborators developed a novel, low-cost device for the delivery of DNA-based vaccines and therapies, which holds great promise for increasing the accessibility of these therapies.