Welcome to 2024! The Fromen lab is poised for an exciting year ahead and hope you are too!
This past Fall ’23 was another busy time for the group. Here’s a quick recap of what we got up to:
Prof. Fromen was busy traveling and sharing exciting updates from the lab. She was invited to speak at the Inhalation & Respiratory Drug Delivery US Congress (San Diego, Oct), the AAPS Annual meeting (Orlando, Oct), the AIChE Annual meeting (Orlando, Nov), and the 12th Annual CT3N Symposium (Philadelphia, Dec). It was great to connect with many old and new colleagues, hear about amazing science, chair sessions for emerging investigators, and share the awesome Fromen lab accomplishments of the past year!
Speaking of AIChE, the Fromen lab was out in full force for the Annual Meeting in Orlando! The team presented a total of 8 talks and 3 posters and had a blast.
Talks:
- Prof Fromen: “Evaluating design parameters for aerosol immune engineering using polymeric and metal-organic framework nanoparticles”
- Prof Fromen: “Single and Multiphase Flows in Well-Defined Periodic 3D-Printed Lattices”
- Aida López Ruiz: “Flow-Based Membrane Technology to Engineer T-Cells”
- Emma Sudduth: “Desirable Formulations for Inhalable Particulate Immunotherapeutics Using Model Peg-Based Nanoparticles”
- Michael Trautmann-Rodriguez: “Macrophage Internalization of PEGDA Nanoparticles Drives Secretion of Pro-Survival Signals”
- Ian Woodward: “Multi-Order Combinatorial Lattices for Spatial Control of Transport Phenomena”
- Ian Woodward: “Directionally Dependent Fluid Behavior from Uniform Periodic Structures: Influence of Design and Additive Process Parameters”
Posters:
- Nicole Gill: “Designing Nanoparticle-Loaded Aerosols for Controlled Interactions with Pulmonary Immune Cells for Treatment of Respiratory Diseases”
- Aida López Ruiz: “Engineering Biomaterials for Women’s Health”
- Saurav Padhye: “Modeling the Impact of Pediatric Tonsil Size on Aerosol Deposition and Drug Delivery”
Congratulations to the entire team for their excellent presentations!
A special congratulations goes out to our award winners:
- Congrats to Emma Sudduth for winning first place in the 22B Bionanotechnology Graduate Award Session! (announcement link)
- Congrats to Saurav Padhye for winning third place in the Food, Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Division of the Student Poster Competition!
- Congrats to Nicole Gill for winning third place in the Food, Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Division of the Student Poster Competition!
We also published a number of exciting manuscripts this fall. Click the Publications page or the icons below to check them out!
On the Path to Predicting Immune Responses in the Lung: Modeling the Pulmonary Innate Immune system at the Air-Liquid Interface (ALI). European Journal Pharmaceutical Science. (2023)
Computational Modeling of Aerosol Particle Transport through Lung Mucosa. Computers and Chemical Engineering 179 (2023) 108458.
Woodward, I.R., Fromen, C.A., Recent developments in aerosol pulmonary drug delivery: new technologies, new cargos, and new targets. Annual Reviews in Biomedical Engineering. (2024)
López Ruiz, A.,* Slaughter, E.,* Kloxin, A.M.,# Fromen, C.A.,# Bridging the gender gap in autoimmunity with T-cell targeted biomaterials. Current Opinion in Biotechnology (2024)
Finally, this fall saw the growth of our lab and we are excited to welcome a whole group of new trainees into the group! First off, we welcome two new Postdoctoral Fellows: Patrick McCauley and Dewansh Rastogi.
Patrick McCauley
Patrick completed his PhD at the Univ of Minnesota with Michelle Calabrese. He was awarded an EDH Postdoctoral Fellowship and will be working on a collaborative 3D bioprinting project with Prof. Bayles!
Dewansh Rastogi
Dewansh completed his PhD at the Univ of Maryland with Akua Asa-Awuku. He will be working on the TIDAL lung project!
In addition to our new postdoctoral fellows, we also welcomed three new PhD students to the group: Lisa Bain, Sam Fine, and Dominic Hoffman.
Lisa Bain
Lisa completed her undergrad degree at the Univ Michigan and received the NSF GRFP in Fall 2023. She will be working on a nanoparticle immune engineering project.
Sam Fine
Sam completed his undergrad degree at GA Tech and will be co-advised with Prof Blenner. He will be working on engineering macrophage cell therapies.
Dominic Hoffman
Dominic completed his undergrad degree at Penn State and will be working on the TIDAL lung project.
To celebrate our awesome fall, the group gathered together for a holiday party in December.
And would like to share our new updated group photo with you to start 2024:
Lots of exciting adventures awaits the Fromen lab in 2024 and we look forward to updating you soon! Wishing you all a productive 2024 ahead!