An interview with Alex Hughes.

Alex Hughes is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, using in vitro organoid models of the developing human kidney to study organogenesis from an engineering perspective. This year, Alex is a Guest Editor for Development's special issue on the extracellular environment, which highlights the contribution of non-cellular components in instructing development. We caught up with Alex over Teams to discuss the importance of the extracellular environment and the challenges it poses to classical experimental design.