News

Aliki spent the past month collaborating with Dr. Kara Spiller’s lab at Drexel University. During her time there she investigated the effects of mineralized collagen scaffolds on macrophage polarization. This collaboration allows for the combination of biomaterial expertise from the Harley lab with macrophage expertise from the Spiller lab. We are excited to see where this collaboration takes her.

Marley was a finalist for the graduate student rapid fire competition at the WE19 conference in Anaheim, CA. Congrats Marley!

Samantha received the 2019 Constance Campbell Research Award for best oral presentation at the 2019 Illinois Symposium on Reproductive Science at Northwestern University for a presentation, “Gelatin-based biomaterials for modeling the endometrium and trophoblast invasion.” Congrats Samantha!

Congrats to Samantha Zambuto and Tori Barnhouse, who both received Graduate College Conference Travel Awards this fall!

Congrats to Brendan and Bryan Bryson (MIT BE) for receiving a collaborative science supplement to Brendan’s NIH R21 to study macrophage heterogeneity in biomaterials under development for craniofacial bone regeneration. A fantastic chance for our groups to work collaboratively to integrate bioinformatics and biomaterials!

Congrats to Brendan and Sara Pedron for receiving a Alzheimer’s-focused administrative supplement to our NIH R01 in the space of biomaterial models of brain cancer. With support from NCI they will be adapting these cultures to create neurodegenerative conditions!

Congrats to Brendan for being named the Robert W. Schaefer Professor in the Dept. of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois.

Congrats to our undergraduate researchers Morgan Kim, Vincent Cornelius, Diana Slater, Andrey Nosatov, Joshua Scott, and Nathan Petrikas for receiving 2019-2020  Illinois Scholars Undergraduate Research (ISUR) fellowships. This highly competitive program provides research funds for individual projects and is a testament to the great graduate and postdoctoral mentors they have!

Congratulations to Samantha Zambuto who was awarded the 2019 BMES Career Development Award for her work regarding racial disparities in pregnancy and how stress affects trophoblast invasion. The prestigious award aims to “support travel to the BMES Annual Meeting for Graduate Students, Postdoctoral Fellows, and Early Career Professionals from underrepresented populations in biomedical engineering and/or involved in research and training focused on health disparities and minority health”.