If you’ve ever created a snowflake by folding, cutting and unfolding a piece of paper, you’ve practiced the art of kirigami. Like origami, kirigami has inspired innovations far beyond the elementary school classroom, with applications ranging from deployable structures for spacecraft to semiconductors.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago’s College of Engineering have employed kirigami strategies to generate complex shapes that mimic tissue forms found in the human body. Their work has implications for tissue engineering and wound healing.

The paper, “A 4D Bio-Kirigami Strategy for Engineering Complex Tissue Curvatures,” was published in Cell Biomaterials. The authors included Kaelyn L. Gasvoda, Aixiang Ding, Zhangli Peng, Alexandria Sterenberg, Oju Jeon and Eben Alsberg.