Belated updates: new funding, new students

With all the excitement from the holidays and vaccine rollouts, we forgot to provide updates. No fear, we have plenty to report on.

New funding: We received several new grants to support bioengineering and biomanufacturing activities. In collaboration with Dr. Jonathan Brunger and Dr. Ken Lau, we were awarded an NSF RECODE grant to explore the use of synthetic biology to pattern brain organoid development. In collaboration with Dr. Jamey Young, Dr. John Wilson, and Dr. Alyssa Weaver, we were awarded an NSF Future Manufacturing grant to engineer and produce designer extracellular vesicles. Last, in collaboration with Dr. Matthew Schrag, we received two new awards. Dr. Schrag and Dr. Lippmann are co-PIs on a pilot award to explore a vascular fibrosis phenotype in cerebral amyloid angiopathy. Dr. Lippmann is also a co-investigator on Dr. Schrag’s new R21 focused on developing an improved mouse model of cerebral amyloid angiopathy.

New students: We are pleased to welcome Corinne Warlick (co-advised with Dr. Scott Guelcher) and Rachel Moen (co-advised with Dr. Jamey Young). Corinne will work on engineering ex vivo vascular niche models and Rachel will work on production of extracellular vesicles from stem cell products.