Lab News

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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Now that the semester is wrapping up, we decided to celebrate with a lab cleanup, followed by cookies! We also resumed our annual end-of-the-year lab potluck (which we didn’t get a picture of because we were too busy eating).

In addition to yummy food, we made holiday cards for some local seniors. Much fun was had by all. We hope everyone has a safe and happy December and New Year!

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We had three students participate in the 2021 SNCURS (State of North Carolina Undergraduate Research Symposium) Event.

You can check out their talks/posters on the website, at least for now (we have no idea how long things will stay available, so we’ve included the link within the symposium and also a direct link to the YouTube video):

• Deeqa talked about her research using the Individual Trabecular Segmentation (ITS) software to analyze trabecular bone-like microstructures: YouTube video
• Kathryn spoke about her work developing a mechanism to study bone-vascular interactions: YouTube video
• Jennifer spoke about her research into the effects of BPBI on gait and grip strength: [no YouTube video, but poster is below]

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Last year, in deference to COVID and social distancing measures, we opted to celebrate fall with a pumpkin carving event held outdoors. Now that it’s late 2021, we’re all back in person but we loved pumpkin carving so much that we decided to do it again!

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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 and Kathryn recently presented their work in bone tissue engineering at the annual NC State CMI (Comparative Medicine Institute) Research & Innovation Summit. This is part of our lab’s collaboration with the Biointerface Lab, also in UNC/NCSU BME

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Emily Fawcett, one of our amazing grad students, defended her PhD today, officially making her Dr. Fawcett. We’re so proud!

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Two of our undergraduates presented their work at the Summer Office of Undergraduate Research Symposium.

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