Education

Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering, University of Florida, 2016

B.S. Biomedical Engineering, University of Miami, 2011

Selected awards and honors

Fellow for NSF ACADEME Training, 2019

Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2019

Fellow for Rising Star Program at MIT, 2018

STAR Award Society for Biomaterials, 2017

Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International Travel award, 2015

NIH F31 Predoctoral Fellowship, 2013-2016

Biography

My research interests are focused on applying engineering tools and principles to understand, stimulate, and modulate the immune system with the goal of developing controlled targeted interventional therapies. My academic training has provided me with extensive research experience in Type I Diabetes pathogenesis, biomaterials, and clinically relevant animal models for disease modelling.

I earned a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Florida in 2016. During my time at UF, I was a NIH predoctoral fellow; my research focused on engineering oxygen-generating materials for addressing the universal challenge of hypoxia within three-dimensional tissue engineered implants, with an emphasis on devices for islet transplantation. Currently, I am a JDRF postdoctoral fellow working to develop a new conceptual understanding of biomaterial mediated immunomodulation and the complex multifactorial cellular factors that lead to graft tolerance for the development of novel therapeutical interventions.