My recent oral presentation on my third dissertation project, “Development of magnetized balls of acrylamide gel (MAG-BAGs) for streamlined genomic workflows”, won the Best Oral Presentation award (student’s choice) at the 2022 Biomedical Engineering Research Day at SBU! I’m particularly jazzed about this because I’ve been focusing on improving my oral presentation and public speaking, particularly through the Fundamentals of Science Communication course I am taking through SBU’s Alan Alda Center for Science Communication. This course is part of the Advanced Graduate Certificate Program in Life Sciences Innovation and Entrepreneurship that I am completing this semester.

Stay tuned for some more updates on my recent research results that were included in that oral presentation!

I’m super excited to announce that on September 16th, my committee approved my defending my dissertation as early as December 2022! I just need to wrap up my final manuscript, polish up the dissertation, write my presentation, and prepare for the defense!

I’m doubly excited as having this approval means I can start my job search in earnest. Man, it’s going to be a super busy Fall… wish me luck!

I’m super excited to share that today, my first paper was published! It is now available online at Microsystems and Nanoengineering, the Nature imprint journal for microfluidics and micro/nanotechnology more broadly! (8:72, 2022)

The “graphical abstract” depicts the pathline-level flow fields in microfluidic droplets flowing through both straight (left) and curved (right) channels:

This paper is the culmination of the last 2-3 years of my PhD work, and describes a technique that we developed for generating high-resolution pathline and velocity fields in single and multiphase (droplet) microfluidic flows. The technique is widely accessible to many researchers, requiring only a brightfield microscope, a high-speed camera, and open-source software. The supplemental data includes all of the raw pathline-level 3D flow data, the scripts that we developed for extracting and processing the data, and an expanded Methods section outlining in detail how to use the technique. If you are a researcher in the microfluidic technology development space, and could benefit from empirical 3D microflow mapping, check it out:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-022-00404-z

Hey there! Thanks for taking the time to learn more about me.

My immediate career goal is to earn a position in research and product development in the medical device or biotechnology industries.

Long story short – I’m a PhD candidate in the Microfluidics for Quantitative and Genomic Biological Laboratory within the Biomedical Engineering department at SBU, working under Prof. Eric Brouzes. My research involves technology development for microfluidic platforms to enable single-cell genomics.

I’m a non-traditional student with over ten years of experience in research and development across both industry and academia.

I completed my qualifying exam in 2019, my proposal defense in 2021, and I anticipate to defend my dissertation this year (2022)!

See “Biography” and “Research Interests” for the long-story-long!