Adam’s talk won first prize in the materials science session at the Graduate Research and Discovery Symposium (GRADS) while Alyson’s poster was awarded first prize in the Bio, Health, and Social Sciences category. Congrats to Adam and Alyson for representing the lab strongly at GRADS!
Gautier’s poster takes the top prize at the Mines undergrad research symposia.
Ramya’s proposal “Machine-guided design of chaperone-mimetic polymeric carriers for ribonucleoprotein delivery” was awarded the prestigious TrailBlazer R21 by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
“The Trailblazer R21 Award is an opportunity for New and Early Stage Investigators to pursue research programs of high interest to the NIBIB at the interface of the life sciences with engineering and the physical sciences”.
We are grateful to our NIBIB PO, Dr. Jermont Chen, and to our co-investigators Prof. Gerard Madlambayan (Department Head and Professor, Biological Sciences, Oakland University) and Prof. Serveh Kamrava (Assistant Professor, Petroleum Engineering, Mines) for their unstinting support.
Congrats to Adam Humpal on winning the undergraduate research mentor award from the Office of Undergraduate Research Scholars! Adam is among 3 PhD students awarded this year. This award recognizes Adam for outstanding mentorship, supporting professional development, learning, and growth.
Congratulations to chemical engineering senior, Wakana Kani, for being offered an NSF GRFP award! Congrats also to Adam Humpal, her PhD student mentor for his outstanding mentorship and support of Wakana’s growth as a researcher.
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions. The fellowship provides a three-year annual stipend as well as a cost of education allowance that is paid to the institution. NSF GRFs are selected based on their potential for scientific leadership and outreach to the broader community. This award is a testament to Wakana’s research creativity, persistence, work ethic, and consistently excellent performance in one of Mines’ most academically grueling programs (CBE).
Wakana is among an elite group of 1000 seniors and PhD students to have received this award. The NSF cut the number of GRFP awards was cut from 2400 in previous years to 1000 this year. Wakana submitted a high-quality application that earned an award despite these lowered odds of success. Congrats to Wakana on her GRFP success! We are proud of you!
The Barry Goldwater scholarship is the most prestigious federal fellowship awarded to research-focused undergraduates in STEM From the web site:
“The Scholarship Program honoring Senator Barry Goldwater was designed to identify, encourage, and financially support outstanding undergraduates interested in pursuing research careers in the sciences, engineering, and mathematics. The Goldwater Scholarship is the preeminent undergraduate award of its type in these fields.”
Only 6 Mines students (with only 1 woman among them) have previously won this honor since the fellowship’s inception in 1989. Caitlyn is the first ever Mines chemistry student to be awarded the Goldwater Scholarship! Congratulations, Caitlyn!
We are grateful to DMR Biomaterials for this recognition. This award will support Alyson in developing experimental and computational tools that advance our fundamental understanding of polymer-mediated ribonucleoprotein delivery. The NSF Faculty Early Career award supports “early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.”. The award will also support the lab’s outreach, education, and mentorship initiatives that promote diversity in the STEM workforce. Check out the Mines press release here.
Alyson Camacho (1st year PhD student, Chemical and Biological Engineering) joins the lab after an outstanding performance in her PhD qualifiers. Alyson did her undergraduate work at Brigham Young University, where she performed research in Prof. William Pitt’s lab. She will be designing experimental workflows and computational pipelines for machine-guided polymer discovery for genome editor protein delivery.
Jordan won first prize for her poster “Synthesis and Characterization of a Statistical Terpolymer Library for Synthetic Gene Delivery Systems” summarizing her work as a SURF scholar over the summer with Jessica Lawson. Around 60 undergraduates participated in this competition. Congratulations, Jordan! 
Ram was selected to present a poster based on his RSC Applied Polymers paper at the Gordon Research Conference (Drug Carrier Design for Cell and Tissue Specific Delivery) in Portland, Maine. Ram was awarded a Postdoctoral/Research Associate Travel Grant from Mines to attend this conference. Congratulations, Ram!