Coming from a rural high school in Northeastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Stroka recognizes the critical need to introduce students from high schools in rural areas to STEM fields. Our first partnership has been with Western Wayne High School in NEPA and started today with a "webinar" interaction between Dr. Stroka and Chemistry, Physics, and Biology high schools students at Western Wayne. Dr. Stroka's talk was titled "Engineering Your Career" and discussed what engineers do, what bioengineering is, job opportunities for bioengineers, and how to prepare for a career in bioengineering. Dr. Stroka also shared a bit about the lab's current research. The students were attentive and asked great questions, the Skype technology and screen sharing worked beautifully, and we are looking forward to expanding this partnership and bringing more knowledge about STEM fields and careers to high school students in rural areas!

Emily Gosselin, a first year BIOE PhD student, will be rotating in our lab during the second half of the fall semester. Welcome, Emily!

PhD student Marina Shumakovich represented the lab at the BMES meeting in Tampa, FL, this week. She presented a poster, titled "Effects of Astrocytes from Brain Microenvironments on Motility and Morphology of Tumor Cells." Shown above is Marina standing proudly next to her poster! Congrats, Marina!

Undergraduate Dani Khalilzadeh (BIOE, '17) has been awarded a SEEDS Research Fellowship through the Women in Engineering Research Fellowship program, for both the Fall 2015 and Spring 2016 semesters! This fellowship is funded by the NSF and was awarded based on her proposal to investigate the role of physical confinement on tumor cell division in microfabricated devices. Congrats to Dani!!!

Read more about the SEEDS Research Fellowship here and about the Women in Engineering program here.