William H. Peranteau, Michael J. Mitchell, Margaret Billingsley, Meghana Kashyap, and Rachel Riley (Clockwise from top left)
Researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Pennsylvania have identified ionizable lipid nanoparticles that could be used to deliver mRNA as part of fetal therapy. The proof-of-concept study, published today in Science Advances, engineered and screened a number of lipid nanoparticle formulations for targeting mouse fetal organs and has laid the groundwork for testing potential therapies to treat genetic diseases before birth.
“This is an important first step in identifying nonviral mediated approaches for delivering cutting-edge therapies before birth,” said co-senior author William H. Peranteau, MD, an attending surgeon in the Division of General, Thoracic and Fetal Surgery and the Adzick-McCausland Distinguished Chair in Fetal and Pediatric Surgery at CHOP. “These lipid nanoparticles may provide a platform for in utero mRNA delivery, which would be used in therapies like fetal protein replacement and gene editing.”
Michael J. Mitchell, Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in Penn Engineering’s Department of Bioengineering, is the other co-senior author of the study. The co-first authors are Mitchell Lab members Rachel Riley, a postdoctoral fellow, and Margaret Billingsley, a graduate student, and Peranteau Lab member Meghana Kashyap, a research fellow.
Recent advances in DNA sequencing technology and prenatal diagnostics have made it possible to diagnose many genetic diseases before birth. Some of these diseases are treated by protein or enzyme replacement therapies after birth, but by then, some of the damaging effects of the disease have taken hold. Thus, applying therapies while the patient is still in the womb has the potential to be more effective for some conditions. The small fetal size allows for maximal therapeutic dosing, and the immature fetal immune system may be more tolerant of replacement therapy.
Speaker: Kyle Daniels, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Scholar, Cellular Molecular Pharmacology
University of California, San Francisco
Date: Thursday, October 22, 2020
Time: 3:00-4:00 PM EDT
Zoom – check email for link or contact ksas@seas.upenn.edu
Title: “High-throughput Screening of a Combinatorial CAR Co-stimulatory Domain Library”
Abstract:
CAR T cells—T cells engineered to express a chimeric antigen receptor that redirects their function to a specific antigen—have proven to be an effective therapy for certain B cell cancers, but many issues remain in order to apply CAR T cells to a broader range of cancers. The activity of CAR T cells can be modulated by varying their co-stimulatory domains. Most CARs use co-stimulatory domains from natural proteins such as 41BB or CD28, each of which contains motifs that recruit unique signaling molecules and elicit a corresponding T cell response. One strategy to achieve increased control over T cell function is to engineer synthetic co-stimulatory domains composed of novel combinations of motifs from natural co-stimulatory proteins. We constructed libraries of CARs containing synthetic co-stimulatory domains and screened these library in primary human T cells for the ability to promote proliferation, degranulation, and memory formation. The results of the screens give insights into how signaling motifs dictate cell function and offer clues on how to engineer co-stimulatory domains that promote desired CAR T cell functions.
Bio:
Kyle completed his BS in Biochemistry at University of Maryland-College Park, and did undergraduate research in the lab of Dorothy Beckett where he studied ligand binding to biotin protein ligases. He did his graduate work at Duke University with Terry Oas working to understand the mechanism of coupled binding and folding in the protein subunit of B. subtilis RNase P. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Wendell Lim’s lab at UCSF studying how combinations of linear motifs in receptors dictate cell function. He was an HHMI undergraduate researcher, an NSF graduate research fellow, and a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow. His research interests include synthetic biology, how cells process information and make decisions, and cellular therapy. Outside of lab, he enjoys swimming, videogames, and quality time with friends.
See the full list of upcoming Penn Bioengineering fall seminars here.
The Department of Bioengineering at Penn is thrilled to congratulate Linden Parkes on receiving a Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) Young Investigator Grant for 2021-2022. This grant will support Parkes’ continued postdoctoral research under the supervision of Danielle S. Bassett, J. Peter Skirkanich Professor of Bioengineering and Electrical and Systems Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), Theodore D. Satterthwaite, Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM), and Raquel E. Gur, the Karl and Linda Rickels Professor of Psychiatry in PSOM.
Originally from Australia, Parkes did his undergraduate B.Sc. (Hons.) in Psychology and Psychophysiology at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. He went on to receive his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health at Monash University (also in Melbourne) under the supervision of Murat Yucel, Professor of Psychology, Alex Fornito, Professor of Psychology, and Ben Fulcher, Senior Lecturer in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. After finishing his doctorate, Parkes moved to Philadelphia to take up a position as a postdoctoral fellow in Danielle Bassett’s Complex Systems Lab.
Parkes will use the BBRF’s support to continue his research examining the link between the symptoms of mental illness and the brain. In particular, he seeks to uncover how individual patterns of abnormal neurodevelopment link to, and predict, the emergence of psychosis symptoms through childhood and adolescence using longitudinal data. In turn, Parkes’ work will discover prognostic biomarkers for the psychosis spectrum that will help inform clinical outcome tracking.
“I am honored to have been selected for a Young Investigator Grant from the BBRF this year,” Parkes says. “This award will support me to conduct research that I believe will make real inroads into understanding the pathways that link abnormalities in neurodevelopment to the symptoms of psychosis. I feel grateful for the opportunity to complete my postdoctoral training at Penn. Penn has connected me with wonderful people who I’m sure will be lifelong mentors, colleagues, and peers.”
The BBRF Young Investigator Grants are valued at more than $10.3 million and are awarded annually to 150 of the world’s most promising young scientists to support the work of early career investigators with innovative ideas for groundbreaking neurobiological research seeking to identify causes, improve treatments, and develop prevention strategies for psychiatric disorders.
Read more about the BBRF 2020 Young Investigators here.
Taylor got her BS in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Virginia where she conducted research under Drs. Cato Laurencin and Edward Botchwey (the latter got his PhD in Penn Bioengineering in 2002). She went on to complete her PhD in Biomedical Engineering in 2016, studying with Dr. Joseph Freeman, in the Musculoskeletal Tissue Regeneration Laboratory at Rutgers University. During her time at Penn, she served as the Co-President of the Biomedical Postdoctoral Council, worked with the Perelman School of Medicine’s PennVIEW program on postdoctoral diversity recruitment, and spearheaded the mentoring circles program, which brings together postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and undergraduates in informal groups that allow mentorship and learning to flow freely.
The foundation for Taylor’s research interests is a combination of her training in bone tissue engineering, bioactive biomaterials, and tendon injury and repair. Her graduate research focused on a three-dimensional biomimetic pre-vascularized scaffold that simultaneously promoted osteogenic and angiogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells in vitro and cellular infiltration and neovascularization in vivo without the addition of growth factors of cells. As a postdoctoral fellow, in addition to investigating the role of collagen type V on tendon inflammation and remodeling in a mouse patellar tendon injury model, she also elucidated the biological and mechanical implications of an implantable bilayer delivery system (BiLDS) for controlled and localized release of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) to modulate tendon inflammation in a rat rotator cuff injury and repair model. This collection of work exploits the ability of these transformative technologies to provide physical and chemical regenerative cues without the use of exogenous cells; hence avoiding possible complications associated with autologous and allogeneic cell sources and simplifying the regulatory pathway towards clinical application. Taylor’s future research program at the University of Florida will focus on tailored cell-free combinatorial strategies, such as decellularized matrices, tunable delivery systems, and modified extracellular vesicles, to complement and improve the native musculoskeletal tissue regenerative and reparative process.
“Brittany has been an amazing postdoctoral fellow,” says her mentor Louis Soslowsky. “She has learned a lot and contributed to various projects in an exemplary manner. She has been a leader in many arenas here at Penn and I am so proud of what she has done so far. I look forward to following her continued accomplishments at the University of Florida! I know she’ll do great!”
“I am grateful for the opportunity to complete my postdoctoral training at Penn,” Taylor says:
“[P]articularly in a lab that is affiliated with the Penn Bioengineering program and the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, where I had the unique experience of addressing basic science questions using translational animal models, while utilizing my engineering background and having a direct interaction with clinicians. Additionally, I connected with some amazing people here at Penn who had a significant impact on my time at Penn, and will be lifelong friends, colleagues, and mentors.”
Congratulations Dr. Taylor from everyone at Penn Bioengineering!
The BWF CASI Career Awards provide $500,000 over five years to bridge advanced postdoctoral training and the first three years of faculty service; and to foster the early career development of researchers who have transitioned from physical/mathematical/computational sciences or engineering into the biological sciences, and who are dedicated to pursuing a career in academic research. Goyal is one of just eight recipients of the 2020-2025 CASI award.
Goyal’s research work is centered around developing novel mathematical and experimental frameworks to study how a rare subpopulation of cancer cells are able to survive drug therapy and develop resistance, resulting in relapse in patients. In particular, his work will provide a view of different paths that single cancer cells take when becoming resistant, at unprecedented resolution and scale. In turn, this will help devise novel therapeutic strategies to combat the challenge of drug resistance in cancer.
“I am very excited to be a part of the community of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund CASI award past and present recipients, which also includes my postdoctoral adviser Arjun Raj, who received this award in 2008,” Goyal says. “This CASI award will help provide me with the freedom to pursue high risk research directions as I transition to faculty. I feel fortunate to be surrounded by kind and supportive colleagues in the Bioengineering Department at Penn, an environment that has been critical for my interdisciplinary journey as a scientist.”
An interdisciplinary research team has found statistical evidence of women being under-cited in academic literature. They are now studying similar effects along racial lines.
By Izzy Lopez
Danielle Bassett, Jordan Dworkin and Perry Zurn are leading efforts to analyze systemic bias in neuroscience citations, and have suggestions for combatting it.
Scientific papers are the backbone of a research community and the citation of those papers sparks conversation in a given field. This cycle of publication and citation leads to new knowledge, but what happens when implicit discrimination in a field leads to papers by minority scholars being cited less often than their counterparts? A new team of researchers has come together to ask this question and dig into the numbers of gender and racial bias in neuroscience.
The team members include physicist and neuroscientist Danielle Bassett, J. Peter Skirkanich Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, with secondary appointments in the Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, statistician Jordan Dworkin, then a graduate student in Penn Medicine’s Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Bioinformatics, and ethicist Perry Zurn, an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at American University.
Their study on gender bias, which recently appeared in Nature Neuroscience, reports on the extent and drivers of gender imbalance in neuroscience reference lists. The team has also published a perspective paper in Neuron that makes practical recommendations for improving awareness of this issue and correcting for biases.
They are now working on a second study, led by Maxwell Bertolero, a postdoctoral researcher in Bassett’s lab, that considers the extent and drivers of racial imbalances in neuroscience reference lists.
Together, Bassett, Dworkin and Zurn are using their combined research strengths to uncover the under-citation of women or otherwise minority-led papers in neuroscience and to assess its significance. This research is fundamental in highlighting a true gap in representation in research paper citations, which can have detrimental effects for women and other minorities leading science. In addition, they provide actionable steps to address the problem and build a more equitable future.
Your research team is a distinctive one. How did you come together for a study about gender discrimination in neuroscience citations?
Jordan Dworkin: It was a fortunate coincidence. In the run-up to a big neuroscience conference, I started seeing discussions on Twitter about gender-based discrimination in neuroscience. There were stories being shared of women’s papers being overlooked and reviewers seeing reference lists that were almost entirely made up of men. It was illuminating, especially because some people in the discussion were hesitant to take those experiences at face value. This skepticism, and occasional combativeness, seemed to stem from the view that citations are an untouchable, scientific bastion where researchers’ decisions are fully objective. The tension between that view and scholars’ lived experiences encouraged me to explore the existing literature on this issue.
As it turns out, there is really strong literature on issues of diversity and citation in science. Some disciplines have done field-specific investigations, such as the foundational studies in political science, international relations, and economics, but there wasn’t yet any research in neuroscience. Since biomedical sciences often have different approaches to citation, it seemed that it would be worth doing a deeper neuroscience-specific investigation to give quantitative backing to the issue of gender bias in neuroscience research.
Danielle Bassett: When Jordan and I started working together on this project, I knew it was important. To do it right, we needed to present the information in a way that made it actionable, with clear recommendations about how each of us as scientists can help address the issue. We also needed to add someone to the team with expertise in gender theory and research ethics. We especially wanted to make sure we were discussing gender bias in a way that was informed by recent advances in gender studies. That’s when we brought Perry in.
Perry Zurn: I’m a philosopher by training, with a focus on ethics and politics. Citations are both an ethical and a political issue. Citations reflect whose questions and whose contributions are recognized as important in the scholarly conversation. As such, citations can either bring in marginalized voices, voices that have been historically excluded from a conversation, or they can simply replicate that exclusion. My own field of philosophy has just as much of a problem with gender and racial diversity as STEM fields, something Dani and I have been talking about for a long time. This work seemed like a natural point of collaboration.
Describe this study and what it means for promoting gender diversity in neuroscience.
Bassett: For years now, various scholars and activists in science have drawn attention to issues of gender and racial inequities in the field. Most of these conversations, however, have placed responsibility for change in the hands of people in power, such as journal editors, grant reviewers, department chairs, presidents of scientific societies, etc. But many of the imbalances people notice, whether in conversation with peers or through studies like ours, are perpetuated by researchers at all levels. Given that every research project is built on prior research, and therefore every paper has a reference list of citations, every researcher can make a difference. Who we choose to cite matters.
Dworkin: To understand the role of gender in citation practices, we looked at the authors and reference lists of articles published in five top neuroscience journals since 1995. We accounted for self-citations, and various potentially relevant characteristics of papers, and we found that women-led papers are under-cited relative to what would be expected if gender was not a consideration in citation behavior. Importantly, we also found that the under-citation of women-led papers is driven largely by the citation behavior of men-led teams. We also found that this trend is getting worse over time, because the field is getting more diverse while citation rates are generally staying the same.
For a very simple example, if there were 10 women and 90 men neuroscientists in 1980, then citing 10% women would be roughly proportional. But with a diversifying field, say there are now 200 women and 200 men neuroscientists and citations are still 10% women. Sure, the percentage of women cited didn’t go down, but that percentage is now vastly lower than the true percentage in the field. That’s a dramatic example, but it shows you that if we’re going to call for equality in scientific citation, the number of women-led papers on a given reference list should reflect, or even exceed, the number of available and relevant women-led papers in a field, and our work found that it does not.
Bassett: This under-citation of women scientists is a key issue because the gaps in the amount of engagement that women’s work receives could have detrimental downstream effects on conference invitations, grant and fellowship awards, tenure and promotion, inclusion in syllabi, and even student evaluations. As a result, understanding and eliminating gender bias in citation practices is vital for addressing gender imbalances in a field.
Why are citations important to gender representation in neuroscience?
Dworkin: Unlike hiring and grant funding, citations are something every researcher participates in. For example, as a graduate student I did not have any role on a faculty search committee, or any power in an academic society to decide on conference speakers, but I still have reference lists in all my papers. Citations are a unique area where all researchers play a direct role, where each person has a chance to reflect on their own practices and use those practices to create change in their field. Their ubiquity means that citations function as a conversation within a field, and their presence or absence can signal whose work is valued and whose is not. On a more concrete level, citations are often used as metrics for a variety of important, potentially career-defining, decisions.
Bassett: There are a lot of underrepresented scholars who have fantastic ideas and write really interesting papers but they’re not being acknowledged — and cited — in the way they deserve. And there are great role models for all the young women who are thinking about going into science, but unless the older women scientists are being cited, the younger ones will never see them. Without serious changes in the field, and a deep commitment to gender and racial diversity, many young women and minority scientists won’t stick with it, they won’t be hired, they won’t be promoted, and they won’t be put in the textbooks.
Zurn: Exactly. I think it’s important not only to think about who we’re citing as leading scientists, but also what sorts of people we’re representing as scientists at all. If you are looking at neuroscience as a field and you see predominantly white cisgender men in the research labs and the reference lists, then you begin to think that is what a neuroscientist looks like. But this homogeneity is neither representative of an increasingly diverse field like neuroscience, nor supportive of continuing efforts to diversify STEM in general. We need to expand what a scientist looks like and citations are one way to do that.
Danielle Bassett also has appointments in Penn Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering and Penn Arts & Sciences Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Jordan Dworkin is now an Assistant Professor of Clinical Biostatistics in the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University.
Kristin Linn, Assistant Professor of Biostatics, Russell Shinohara, Associate Professor of Biostatistics, and Erin Teich, a postdoctoral researcher in Bassett’s lab, also contributed to the study published in Nature Neuroscience. It was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke through grants R01 NS085211 and R01 NS060910, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the National Science Foundation through CAREER Award PHY-1554488.
New research finds that works of literature, musical pieces, and social networks have a similar underlying structure that allows them to share large amounts of information efficiently.
Examples of statistical network analysis of characters in two of Shakespeare’s tragedies. Two characters are connected by a line, or edge, if they appear in the same scene. The size of the circles that represent these characters, called nodes, indicate how many other characters one is connected to. The network’s density relates to how complete the graph is, with 100% density meaning that it has all of the characters are connected. (Image: Martin Grandjean)
By Erica K. Brockmeier
To an English scholar or avid reader, the Shakespeare Canon represents some of the greatest literary works of the English language. To a network scientist, Shakespeare’s 37 plays and the 884,421 words they contain also represent a massively complex communication network. Network scientists, who employ math, physics, and computer science to study vast and interconnected systems, are tasked with using statistically rigorous approaches to understand how complex networks, like all of Shakespeare, convey information to the human brain.
New research published in Nature Physics uses tools from network science to explain how complex communication networks can efficiently convey large amounts of information to the human brain. Conducted by postdoc Christopher Lynn, graduate students Ari Kahn and Lia Papadopoulos, and professor Danielle S. Bassett, the study found that different types of networks, including those found in works of literature, musical pieces, and social connections, have a similar underlying structure that allows them to share information rapidly and efficiently.
Technically speaking, a network is simply a statistical and graphical representation of connections, known as edges, between different endpoints, called nodes. In pieces of literature, for example, a node can be a word, and an edge can connect words when they appear next to each other (“my” — “kingdom” — “for” — “a” — “horse”) or when they convey similar ideas or concepts (“yellow” — “orange” — “red”).
The advantage of using network science to study things like languages, says Lynn, is that once relationships are defined on a small scale, researchers can use those connections to make inferences about a network’s structure on a much larger scale. “Once you define the nodes and edges, you can zoom out and start to ask about what the structure of this whole object looks like and why it has that specific structure,” says Lynn.
Building on the group’s recent study that models how the brain processes complex information, the researchers developed a new analytical framework for determining how much information a network conveys and how efficient it is in conveying that information. “In order to calculate the efficiency of the communication, you need a model of how humans receive the information,” he says.
Lydon-Staley started out studying English and Psychology in his undergraduate education, going on to pursue a Ph.D. from Penn State University in Human Development and Family Studies. What brought him to Bassett’s lab was his interest in using cognitive neuroscience to understand the brain patterns and behaviors behind substance abuse and addiction. There, Lydon-Staley examined networks of nicotine withdrawal behaviors, how those behaviors impact each other, and what information they might hold about how to help smokers in their quit attempts. “David’s breadth of interest is only rivalled by his expansive expertise and bottomless enthusiasm,” says Bassett. “I feel incredibly lucky to have had the chance to work with him.”
In his new role at Annenberg, Lydon-Staley will launch the Addiction, Health, and Adolescence Lab, or “AHA!” for short. “My recent work examines engagement with new media during the course of daily life, and how the information sought and encountered relates to both curiosity and substance use,” he says. Lydon-Staley’s new lab will use methods like experience-sampling and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to understand brain and behavior, while drawing on theories and tools from communication, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, network science, and more.
Even though Lydon-Staley will be working out of a new school at Penn, he still has plans to continue collaborating with the Bassett Lab. One ongoing project he has with the lab involves studying how curiosity works in everyday life, and another looks at moment-to-moment patterns of cigarette withdrawal in daily smokers. “Working in the Bassett Lab gave me the confidence and ability to stretch my wings, chase ideas across traditional disciplinary lines, learn new skills, and collaborate with creative and capable scientists every day,” says Lydon-Staley. Those are opportunities he hopes to keep chasing and fostering in his new position.
Beyond continuing his prior research from a communication-based angle, Lydon-Staley is also excited to develop new classes in the Annenberg School. “Annenberg is a very special place. It is an active school, with frequent seminars and many vibrant research centers,” he says. Informed and inspired by the breadth of research from Annenberg scholars, Lydon-Staley hopes that he can create classes that focus on the psychology of time and timing in everyday life—topics that he spends a lot of time thinking about himself.
Above all, Lydon-Staley is excited by the opportunity to stay at Penn and continue the kind of versatile and multi-faceted studies that have been the bedrock of his research so far. He hopes to continue expanding his previous work with not only the Engineering School, but the School of Medicine and the Graduate School of Education as well. “The opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration at Penn are unrivaled, and I am constantly in awe of the quality of students here.”
The Department of Bioengineering is proud to congratulate Whelton Miller, Ph.D., a former BE Postdoctoral Fellow, on his appointment as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine in the Health Sciences Division at Loyola University. Miller’s appointment began in January 2020.
Miller received his B.S. in Biochemistry in 2001 from the University of Delaware where he worked under the supervision of Dr. Douglass F. Taber. After graduation, he worked in industry as a synthetic organic chemist for a pharmaceutical company. After three years of industry experience, he returned to academia to complete a Ph.D. in Theoretical/Computational Chemistry from the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia in 2012.
After graduate school, he was given a unique opportunity through Penn’s Postdoctoral Opportunities in Research and Teaching (PennPORT) program, an NIH-sponsored, Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA) postdoctoral fellowship. In addition to Miller’s responsibilities through the PennPORT program, he served on the Biomedical Postdoctoral Council (BPC), as well as chair of the Engineering PostDoc Association (EpoD). He has worked closely with the Physician Scientist Training Program (PSTP) as a mentor to a high school student, as well as a program guest speaker. This allowed Miller to be a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Bioengineering at Penn in the Radhakrishnan Lab – led by BE Department Chair Ravi Radhakrishnan – which focuses on the interface between chemical physics and molecular biology.
Miller has also gained experience in various affiliated appointments, serving as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Physics at Lincoln University (2015-2019), and is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE) at Penn and an Adjunct Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Ghana in Accra.
Miller joined Loyola University in Chicago, IL in the summer of 2019. Now in his new faculty position, Miller continues to work on collaborative research projects and include colleagues at Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo, the University of Pennsylvania, Lincoln University, University of Ghana, and the University of the Sciences. His current research involves using computational chemistry techniques for theoretical design and study of organometallic and inorganic compounds, protein ligand interactions, and structural electronic effects. His goal is to employ several computational techniques to understand, as well as predict, molecular interactions, such as protein-ligand interactions and protein-protein interactions. Miller says he is always looking forward to more opportunities for minority student development and enrichment in the STEM-related disciplines. Congratulations, Dr. Miller!
Originally from Matawan, NJ, Riley has been an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in the Mitchell Lab since 2018. Her move to a faculty position at Rowan marks a return, as she received her B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering there in 2012. Riley went on to receive her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering in 2018 at the University of Delaware with Emily Day, Ph.D. before joining the lab of Michael J. Mitchell, Ph.D., Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation, later that year. The Mitchell Lab’s research lies at the interface of biomaterials science, drug delivery, and cellular and molecular bioengineering to fundamentally understand and therapeutically target biological barriers.
“Rachel has had a prolific academic career at the University of Delaware and at Penn, launching several exciting research projects and mentoring the next generation of STEM researchers,” Mitchell says. “I’m very hopeful that her new position as an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Rowan University will permit her to engineer new drug delivery technologies for women’s health applications.”
Research in the Riley Lab at Rowan will explore how nanoparticle drug delivery technologies can be engineered specifically for applications in women’s health. They will use nanoparticles as tools to study and treat gynecological cancers, fetal diseases, and pregnancy complications. Riley’s ultimate goal is to gain a fundamental understanding of how nanoparticle structure influences delivery to gynecological tissues to enable them to take an engineering approach to tackle new applications in women’s health.
Riley says that she is committed to supporting women and minorities in STEM disciplines and she looks forward to continuing collaborations with Penn and starting new collaborations with researchers at Cooper Medical School at Rowan University (CMSRU). Congratulations, Dr. Riley!
