Electronic pacemakers have numerous inherent deficiencies, such as limited sensitivity to changes in physical activities of recipients and necessary surgeries for battery replacement every 5-10 years for the recipients. Biopacemakers composed of human pacemaking cells similar to those in the native cardiac pacemaking tissue can circumvent these deficiencies that are inherent in the electronic devices. One potential source of human pacemaking cells is through derivation from the human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). This award has enabled our laboratory to optimize the differentiation protocol and the microenvironment to induce hiPSC-derived heart cells to behave functionally more like the pacemaking rather than the contractile type. This is the first step towards having the right components for engineering biopacemakers.