PhD student Kelsey Gray presented a poster at the 2019 Cerebral Vascular Biology Conference in Miami, FL, this week. Her poster was titled, "Quantifying brain endothelial cell-cell junction presentation: Investigating the role of cyclic-AMP and substrate composition." Kelsey presented new results using our recently-published Junction Analyzer Program (JAnaP).

Congratulations to PhD student Ariana DeCastro, who successfully passed her Research Aptitude Exam today! This marks the first of several key milestones in our department's PhD program. Congratulations, Ariana, and great job!

Congratulations to Dr. Marina Pranda, who successfully defended her PhD defense today! This marks the first Stroka Lab defense, and we are so proud! Awesome work, Marina!

Marina joined the FIschell Department of Bioengineering in Fall 2014 and the Stroka Lab in January 2015. She has published her work in FASEB Journal, with at least 3 more publications forthcoming. Marina has presented her work at 9 national and international conferences, including the BMES and CMBE annual meetings, Gordon Research Conference, and 19th International Signal Transduction at the Blood-Brain Barriers Symposium in Copenhagen, Denmark). She has won numerous awards throughout her career as a PhD student, including national awards (BMES Career Development Award and Gordon Research Conference Travel Award) as well as numerous awards from the UMD Grad School (Ann G. Wylie Dissertation Fellowship, Outstanding Graduate Student Award, Goldhaber Travel Award, International Conference Student Support Award, Graduate Research Appreciation Day Travel Award for best talk). Marina is a Clark School of Engineering Future Faculty Fellow and during her teaching practicum in BIOE404, designed and completed a Teaching as Research project, which she presented at the American Society for Engineering Education Conference. Marina has been a dedicated mentor to many undergraduate students, with at least 5 of them co-authoring her papers. Congratulations, Marina!!!