Date/Time
Date(s) - 04/15/2024
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Location
Communicore, C1-11

Shreya Raghavan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor & Cain Faculty Fellow, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Texas A&M University

The Raghavan lab breaks down tissue and tumor microenvironments into stackable engineering variables including mechanics, architecture and immune competency. The lab operates at the nexus of biomaterials, mechanobiology, and immuno-oncology, with the goal of modeling mechanics through tissue engineering. The talk will highlight platforms we have established in our lab that isolate tissue mechanics in two ways: i) externally applying mechanics to study cancer immune evasion; ii) tissue engineering intestinal structures to replicate tissue mechanics to heal from chronic neuroinflammation. Ultimately, the talk will highlight how the Raghavan lab uses engineering based discovery to move therapeutic discovery forward.

Bio:

Dr. Shreya Raghavan is an Assistant Professor and holds the Cain Faculty Fellowship II in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She is also a Scholar in the Regional Excellence Center for Cancer at Texas A&M University. She has a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Wake Forest University/Virginia Tech and was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan. At Texas A&M, the Raghavan lab engineers mechanically competent microenvironments to advance our understanding of human and veterinary health. Her approaches integrate mechanobiology, biomaterials and microenvironment engineering to ask questions that intersect the cancer stem cell/immune axis. Her work is funded by the NIH/NCI through an R37 MERIT award, the Department of Defense, and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. She is an award winning scientist, recognized by the Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society.

In the BME classroom, Dr. Raghavan is recognized for her inclusive pedagogy by the Montague Scholars Award from Texas A&M University.  Dr. Raghavan is an advocate for accessibility and equity, working actively towards dismantling systemic processes that hold academics behind in STEM.  In addition to being a scientist, Dr. Raghavan moonlights as a chef and chauffeur to two demanding tiny humans.