She also holds a courtesy appointment in the Biomedical Engineering department at CMU. Prof. Taylor received her B.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Princeton University and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. During her doctoral research she worked with Professor Beth Pruitt developing microscale force sensors for studying the mechanics of stem-cell derived heart muscle cells. She was subsequently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Biochemistry at the Stanford University School of Medicine, working under the supervision of Professor James Spudich. She is the director of the Microsystems and Mechanobiology Lab and her research team uses micro- and nanoscale structures as sensors and actuators for investigating the mechanics of cellular and molecular biosystems.