Welcome to the Fromen Research Group! Our research is all about the lungs. We seek to advance understanding of the unique environment of the airways, from fluid dynamics to mucosal immunology. Armed with this foundation, we develop new therapeutics and analytical tools to treat a range of diseases specific to the lungs.
Summer ’23 Round up
It was another busy summer for the Fromen lab! Here’s what we’ve been up to:
In July, Emma and Aida attended the CRS in Las Vegas, where they both received recognition for the Best Poster Award in their sessions!
Aida’s poster (left) was titled: “Flow-based membrane technology to engineer T-cells” and Emma’s poster (right) was titled: “Designing Inhalable Particulate Immunotherapies using Relevant In Vitro Models.” Congrats to both of you!
Emily, Saurav & Ian, along with collaborators Yu Feng (OSU) and Jenna Briddell (Nemours) published their computational manuscript in AAPS PharmSciTech as part of the Advances in Drug Delivery by Inhalation – Official Collection from AAPS Inhalation & Nasal Community (INC). The paper is titled: “A pediatric upper airway library to evaluate interpatient variability of in silico aerosol deposition.” Congrats to the team!
Click the icon to the right to check it out!
In August, Prof Fromen and Ian attended the 2023 ISAM Congress in Saarbruken, Germany! It was a great time connecting with members of the aerosol medicine community, as well as sharing our science! Ian represented the Fromen lab with his poster “Development of an in vitro Full-volume Airway Approximation for Assessing Breath-dependent regional aerosol deposition.” Prof Fromen was also busy, completing her term as the ISAM Award Committee chair and helping to host the Women in ISAM luncheon. During this Congress, she was also elected as a board member!
We loved getting to tour the beautiful Saarbruken countryside, plus our pitstop in Paris en route! Looking forward to hosting ISAM 2025 alongside David Cipolla and Lana Lyapustina in the Washington DC area – stay tuned for more info!
Next up for the Fromen lab, we celebrate our rising second year PhD students, who sat for their qualifying exams this August! Congrats to Jodi Graf, Eric Slaughter (both receiving commendations), Spencer Wolfe, and Saiful Roslan on this milestone!
Finally, we congratulate Nicole, Saurav, Ning, and Adhya on a great summer in the lab – we’re excited for all of our awesome undergrads to return this fall! Nicole, Saurav, and Ning will all be completing their Senior research with us – be on the look out for their graduate applications soon!
That’s it for now! We’re excited for the 2023-2024 academic year, which is slated for lots of big changes to the Fromen lab! Stay tuned for more updates and wishing you all a great semester ahead!
PhD #5!!
Congratulations to the newly minted Dr. Ian Woodward, the Fromen lab’s fifth PhD graduate!!! Ian defended his thesis entitled “Additive Manufacturing and Open Lattice Structures for Applications in Chemical Engineering and Pulmonary Drug Delivery”. His thesis defense was a true tour-de-force showcasing the software, hardware, engineering, & device creation he has pioneered over the past few years. We are all beyond proud of the work you’ve done in the group and thankful for everything you’ve done making the Fromen lab what it is today!
Many huge congratulations to Ian— we can’t wait to hear about all the amazing things you will continue to accomplish next!
Wrapping up Spring 2023
The Fromen lab has had another busy semester! Lots of exciting news and milestones to share in this Spring 2023 wrap up!
Congratulations to the newly minted Dr. Kartik Bomb, the Fromen lab’s fourth PhD graduate!!! Kartik was co-advised with Prof April Kloxin and defended his thesis in April, entitled “Designing Hydrogel-Based Tunable Platforms to Investigate and Modulate Immune Cell Responses”. He has accepted a position at Merck and will be launching his industry career in June!
We are so excited for Kartik — he was our first co-advised student, successfully navigated the pandemic, overcame many research hurdles and has done so much to shape the research directions and culture of our group. We are so thankful for your hard work and so very proud of your accomplishments!! We are excited to see what you accomplish (and who else’s socks get knocked off!) next!
Next, we have a few new publications to celebrate! Congratulations to:
- Emma, Michael, Nicole, and Kartik for their awesome review “Aerosol Pulmonary Immune Engineering” which was published in Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews!
- Kartik, Matthew, and Eden for their collaborative work between the Fromen and Kloxin labs “Systematic d-Amino Acid Substitutions to Control Peptide and Hydrogel Degradation in Cellular Microenvironments” that was published in ACS Macro Letters!
And we also would like to congratulate Bader and Kartik for their DDTR article being selected as the Featured Article for the July 2023 issue!
Click below or head to our publication section for links to read all of these great articles!
“Aerosol Pulmonary Immune Engineering” Adv Drug Deliv Reviews 2023
“Systematic d-Amino Acid Substitutions to Control Peptide and Hydrogel Degradation in Cellular Microenvironments” Macro Letters 2023
In May, Prof Fromen and Emma Sudduth traveled to the ATS Annual Meeting in Washington DC and had the opportunity to share some exciting on-going work in the Fromen lab. It was great to connect with the clinical audience there!
Next in the Spring Semester round-up, we would like to congratulate our graduating Seniors! Simone graduates with an Honors Degree with Distinction in Biomedical Engineering from UD! Simone successfully defended her senior thesis “Identification of Pro-Survival Signal Secretions from Macrophages treated with PEG-based Nanoparticles” in May and is headed to Northeastern to pursue her PhD in Bioengineering! Good luck Simone, we will miss you and know you will be up to great things!
Congrats also to graduating Senior Hannah Bockius, who is graduating with an Honors degree in BME!
Keeping in the theme of graduations… this year we hooded Fromen lab two PhD students in the UD PhD Ceremony (and held one impromptu celebration in the hallway of Colburn a few months early). Huge congratulations again to Fromen Lab PhDs #3-Emily Kolewe, #4-Kartik Bomb, and #5-Ian Woodward (be on the lookout for his defense this coming August!). It was so great celebrating you all and your amazing accomplishments!
While we say goodbye to some graduating members, we are also fortunate to welcome some new students into the lab! This summer, we welcome rising sophomore Adyha Anilkumar (BME) and rising senior Ning Zhang (CBE) to our undergraduate cohort! We also welcome back Saurav Padyhe who is returning from his study abroad in Singapore this past spring!
Finally, our last celebration goes to Prof Fromen, whose promotion to Associate Professor with Tenure was approved by the UD Board of Trustees in May! She would like to thank ALL of the Fromen lab members, past and present, for all of their hard work, enthusiasm, and patience — without you, this would never have been possible! She would also like to thank the CBE department, the UD COE, Research Office, and Univ as a whole, as well as all of the many many mentors, letter writers, collaborators, colleagues, friends, and family for all of the support over the years.
To kick off the celebrations, the CBE Department threw Prof Fromen and Prof Kevin Solomon a party, filled with some friendly impersonations and a “who said it” game. Thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us! And be on the look out for a future celebration / Fromen lab reunion to come!
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