Robert E. Akins, Jr., PhD, FAACPDM, FAHA is a Principal Scientist, Director of the Center for Pediatric Clinical Research and Development (CPCRD), and Head of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Research at the Nemours Children’s Hospital in Delaware. He holds multiple leadership roles in research, mentoring, and faculty development programs at Nemours, and he is a full professor affiliated with the departments of Materials Science & Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Biological Sciences at the University of Delaware. He joined Nemours in 1992.

Dr. Akins received both his bachelor's and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He is an inaugural fellow of the American Heart Association and a Fellow of the American Academy for Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine.

Research in the highly collaborative Akins group focuses on regenerative medicine and precision therapeutics for children requiring major surgery due to congenital and perinatal conditions. The group has a particular emphasis on stem-cell and biomaterials-based approaches that can be individually-tuned for therapeutic use and on developing computational models for the diagnosis and prognosis of complex disease in newborns.

His work has been generously supported by the Nemours Foundation, the American Heart Association, NASA's Biotechnology and Cell Science Program, the Swank Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (OD, NHLBI, NICHD, NCRR, and NIGMS), the State of Delaware, and the American Academy for Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine / Pedal with Pete Foundation.