Category: Awards & Honors

Catherine recently presented her research with Gabby at the State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research and Creativity Symposium (SNCURCS). Her research looked at the effects of sphingoside-1-phosphate (S1P) on bone and vascular cells.

In addition to the presentation, Catherine was also awarded funding through BME’s Abrams Scholars Program and the NC State Office of Undergraduate Research. Amazing! 

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Congratulations to Gabby for receiving the Witherspoon Graduate Fellowship! You can read the department announcement, below, or check it out here.

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The Witherspoon Graduate Fellowship honors Dr. Augustus M. Witherspoon, who received his Ph.D. from NC State in 1971. He was the university’s second Black doctoral graduate and first Black professor. Dr. Witherspoon also served as Assistant Dean, Associate Dean of the Graduate School and Associate Provost of the Office of African American Affairs. In 1992, the NC State Board of Trustees awarded him a citation of appreciation for his service to the university.

Funded by an endowment to North Carolina State University, this esteemed one-year award honors individuals dedicated to supporting Black communities within and beyond the NC State campus.

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This semester we have a whopping SIX Abrams Scholar in the lab! 

Brooke, Josh, Katie, Claire, and Brian will all be helping with the BPBI project. Brooke, Josh, and Katie will be looking at the effect of BPBI on bone metabolism and muscle composition. Claire will be looking at BPBI’s effect on bone microstructure, and Brian will be looking at its effect on rotator cuff muscle architecture specifically.

Carter will be working with Sandra on the bone-on-chip project. His project is titled ‘Development of a bone-on-chip platform to examine effects of post-stroke inflammation on bone-vascular interactions’

We’re so proud of all of you!

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Our undergraduates have been very busy. Several of them travelled to Wisconsin for NCUR, presented at the NC State Undergraduate Research Symposium, and presented a talk at our year-end Abrams seminar, all in less than 2 weeks!

At the Undergraduate Research Symposium, we had:

• Kathryn: Characterization of Porous, Mineralized Collagen-Chitosan Scaffolds for use in a Bone-On Chip Platform (working with Sandra)
• Brooke: Effects of Brachial Plexus Birth Injury on Composition of Biceps, Supraspinatus, & Subscapularis Muscles (working with Kyla)
• Rose: Verifying Quality of Joint Reaction Forces Obtained from Musculoskeletal Models for Contact Finite Element Analysis of the Rat Shoulder Following BPBI  (working with Jason)
• Amanda: Characterizing Architecture of a Biomimetic Bone Scaffold (working with Sandra)
• Katie: Gait Impairment in a Rat Model of Brachial Plexus Birth Injury (working with Kyla)
• Steven: Understanding Paw Preference Associated with Brachial Plexus Birth Injury (working with Kyla)

Amanda, Kathryn, Katie, and Brooke also presented their research at the Abrams Scholars Final Presentations.

In addition to the four above, Carter and Deeqa also presented at the Abrams final presentations:

• Carter: Characterization of a 3D biomimetic bone scaffold for in vitro examination of bone microenvironments (working with Sandra)
• Deeqa: Finite Element Analysis of Trabecular Bone Microstructure with Passive Joint Loads Following Brachial Plexus Birth Injury (working with Jason)
  

We’re also very proud to share that Jacque won the Michael Dickey Outstanding Research Mentor Award, which is presented annually at the Spring Undergraduate Research Symposium. This award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated excellence in mentoring and supporting undergraduate researchers. Winners of this award show a commitment to serving as a guide for undergraduate students as they move from directed to more independent work, creating opportunities for them to develop advanced technical and soft skills, encouraging then to share their research publicly, supporting underrepresented students, and offering academic and career advice for their mentees. Jacque was nominated by our lab’s undergrads for everything that she does for them and for the lab.

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Sandra was recently awarded a Predoctoral Fellowship from the NIH to help her finish up her graduate work. Though she found out that she scored very high back in the fall, she did not officially receive confirmation of funding until today– the number of fellowships awarded each year depends on budget, so a high score is good but receiving an official Notice of Award is better.

We’re all so excited for her!

You can go congratulate her on Twitter yourself:

Good news today! I got the NoA for my F31 application! Very happy and relieved that hard work does indeed payoff!! 🎉🎊 #phdwin @UNCNCSUBME @JacqueColeLab

— Sandra Stangeland-Molo (@Zandyrz) March 10, 2022

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Earlier this year, Jacque was named to the third cohort of AGEP-NC fellows. Per the website:

AGEP-NC (North Carolina Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate) Fellows serve two-year terms learning about cross-cultural mentoring, promoting diversity in doctoral programs, and facilitating departmental dialog.

• Fellows develop initiatives to raise awareness, promote buy-in and build cross-cultural and mentoring skills among the faculty in their department;
• Engage the faculty in designing approaches to address obstacles for students and the needs of faculty for creating pathways for success for diverse dissertation students;
• Coordinate a faculty process of developing a departmental plan for doctoral student diversity and inclusion.

Here’s the rest of the cohort (original on the AGEP-NC Webpage):

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Jennifer, one of our long-time undergrads, was recently awarded the BME Excellence in Undergraduate Research Award for her outstanding work done in OML. We’re so proud of her, but also so sad that we’re going to lose her in the spring as she graduates and moves on to bigger and better things.

Per the announcement, “The goals of these awards include: giving students formal recognition to support their next steps (graduate school applications, job applications, etc.); and promoting a culture of BME undergraduate students thriving within research laboratories across both campuses. [These] students have gone “above and beyond” to make significant contributions to their research labs.”

Check out the announcement here: https://bme.unc.edu/bme-excellence-in-undergraduate-research-awardees/ 

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The 2021-2022 cohort of Abrams Scholars was recently announced. Four of our amazing undergrads were named as Abrams Scholars: Kathryn, who is working with Sandra on her Bone-On-Chip project; Jennifer, who is working with Kyla on the BPBI project; and Vince and Deeqa, who are both working with Jason on Finite Element Modeling.

Here are their project titles:

• Kathryn: Development of a bone-on-chip platform to examine effects of post-
  stroke inflammation on bone-vascular interactions
• Jennifer: Effect of Brachial Plexus Birth Injury on Limb Use and Muscle Strength
• Deeqa: Analyzing the effect of heterogeneity on trabecular bone tissue
  microdamage in finite element models of varying resolution
• Vince: Optimizing nonlinear finite element analyses of vertebral trabecular bone

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Sandra was recently profiled for #BlackBiomxHistory, part of the Black Biomechanics Association. You can see her profile here:

We celebrate those who are paving the way for Black scientists with their excellence and professional leadership. Stay tuned for more inspiring #BlackBiomxHistory #biomechanics (2/2)

— BlackBiomechanists (@BlackBiomechs) June 21, 2021

On top of that, she’s taken on a key role in the new Triangle Biomechanics student chapter for the American Society of Biomechanics. And in between she somehow manages to also be a grad student!

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Jacque was awarded an Outstanding Teacher Award for the College of Engineering a NC State. Not that we’re at all surprised because we all know Jacque is an amazing, dedicated, and caring teacher, but it’s nice to see others recognize that as well.

You can read more about the award here:

https://alumni.ncsu.edu/alumni-association-recognizes-distinguished-faculty/

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