We were awarded $1,993,748 for our NIGMS R35 project “Directing and Deciphering Macrophage Polarization through Biologically-Inspired Surface Design of Polymer Brush-Coated Cell Culture Substrates”. This Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award will support our work in developing polymer brushes to answer fundamental cell biology questions.
Gautier’s poster takes the top prize at the Mines undergrad research symposia.
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.
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!
Caitlyn has been selected for supplemental funding by NIBIB. She will be developing and testing polymer brushes for growth factor immobilization.
We are grateful to the Children’s Hospital of Colorado and the RTT office at Mines for a $10,000 pilot award to design mucopenetrative nanocarriers for inhalable gene therapeutics for treating cystic fibrosis (CF) and primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD). We are excited to collaborate with Dr. Scott Sagel, who directs the the CF and PCD Clinical and Research Centers at CHCO.
Claire took home the first prize, edging out 11 other Mines students in the oral presentation competition. Caitlyn’s poster was recognized as the best poster among freshmen. Check out the results here 
Ramya examined the relationship between poly(zwitterionic) brush properties and stem cell self-renewal rates and discovered that gel architectural differences can be exploited to maximize stem cell proliferation. To access optimal architectures, Ramya developed a property prediction tool that mapped the relationship between…
Recognizing the urgent clinical need for synthetic vectors, Ramya implemented an unbiased materiomics approach to polymer-mediated gene delivery. She faced two obstacles: 1) the intricacies involved in the rapid synthesis of precisely designed polymers through controlled radical polymerization techniques and 2) the paucity of experimental platforms that unite throughput, analytical rigor and precision.