Congratulations to undergraduate and BS-MD student, Nane Manukyan, who won second place for her poster at the Mid-Atlantic Undergraduate Research Day last weekend! Here poster was titled, "Mechanical Regulation of Endometriotic Implantation in Endometriosis." Huge congratulations to Nane!!

Congratulations to undergraduate student Ariel Abraham, who has been awarded UMD's SPIRE Fellowship to support his research in the lab this summer! Great job, Ariel!

Huge congratulations to Ken Brandon, who defended his dissertation today!! Ken's dissertation develops a multiscale framework to investigate endothelial junction remodeling across molecular, temporal, and spatial scales. His work advances our understanding of the endothelial barrier as a dynamic and coordinated system and how it is altered when disrupted. Ken received multiple fellowships to support his work, including the Clark Doctoral Fellowship and the NIH F31 Predoctoral Fellowship. Ken's PhD work has resulted in 7 papers, including a first-author review, a first-author research paper published in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering that was selected for cover art, 3 co-authored papers, and 2 more first-author papers in preparation. He has presented his research at national and international conferences, including a talk at the BMES Annual Meeting and the Gordon Research Conference on Cell Contact and Adhesion in Switzerland, for which he received a competitive GRC travel award. Ken also received the Goldhaber Travel Award and the International Conference Travel Support Award from the UMD Graduate School. He has been a wonderful mentor to undergraduate students in the lab, including Azkah, who completed an Honors thesis under his mentorship and will be going on to a PhD program next year, and Yoshi, who entered a PhD program last year. Congratulations, Ken!

Huge congratulations to Dr. Ian Smith (PhD lab alum), who has been selected to receive the Charles Caramello Distinguished Dissertation Award from the University of Maryland! This award is given to 4 PhD students each year, and Ian was selected as this year's recipient for the "Mathematics, Physical Sciences, and Engineering" category.  
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Read more about the award here:
https://gradschool.umd.edu/funding/student-fellowships-awards/distinguished-dissertation-award

Congratulations to first-year PhD student Lauryn McKenna, who was awarded third place in the poster competition at Graduate Research Appreciation Day! Lauryn's poster was titled, "Viscoelastic Tuning at the Blood-Brain Barrier." Awesome job, Lauryn!!

Huge congratulations to Shohini Banerjee, who was selected as this year's Engineering Commencement Speaker! We are so excited for you and proud of you, Shohini!!!

Congratulations to Shohini Banerjee, whose paper was accepted for publication in Journal of Biological Physics! Also thanks to co-authors, Dr. Corey Herr and Dr. Wolfgang Losert!

Huge congratulations to senior undergraduate student, Azkah Anjum, who defended her Honors Thesis today!! Azkah's thesis is titled, "Investigating the Mechanics of Iron-Induced Oxidative Stress and Endothelial Dysfunction in Coronary Artery Endothelial Cells." We are also excited to announce that Azkah will be joining Carnegie Mellon's BME PhD program this fall!! Congratulations, Azkah!!!