Meet CryoFab | 2026 President's Innovation Challenge Ingenuity Award Winner

Why It Matters

By turning a temporary, biocompatible scaffold into functional vasculature, CryoFab could shrink the organ‑donor gap and unlock scalable tissue‑engineering markets.

Key Takeaways

• CryoFab uses ice as sacrificial material for tissue scaffolds.
• Built custom 3D ice printer with -45°C Peltier cooling system.
• Ice prints create precise internal channels that melt without residue.
• Enables vascular network fabrication, addressing organ transplant shortage.
• Awarded 2026 President's Innovation Challenge Ingenuity Award recognition.

Summary

CryoFab, the 2026 President's Innovation Challenge Ingenuity Award winner, unveiled a novel 3‑D printing platform that uses ice as a sacrificial material to create vascular channels in engineered tissues.

With over 100,000 patients awaiting transplants, lack of internal vasculature stalls tissue viability. CryoFab’s team built a bespoke ice printer featuring custom extrusion, a Peltier‑cooled printhead reaching –45 °C, and proprietary tool‑path algorithms, enabling precise, melt‑away channels inside soft biomaterials.

As the team explains, “Ice can create precise internal channel geometries inside soft materials and then simply disappear—no toxic residue, no extraction.” This melt‑away approach directly addresses the long‑standing bottleneck of supplying oxygen and nutrients to thick tissue constructs.

If adopted, the technology could accelerate the production of vascularized organoids and grafts, reducing reliance on donor organs and opening new commercial pathways for regenerative‑medicine firms.

Original Description

CryoFab is a 3D ice printer that uses water as a sacrificial material to create internal channels for tissue engineering. By treating ice as a programmable fabrication material, it opens up promising possibilities for biomedical fabrication and other applications where dissolvable internal architectures are needed.

Learn more about CryoFab: https://innovationlabs.harvard.edu/venture/cryofab