Feb. 28, 2018
UG student Kaitlyn Daramola receives a competitive University Scholars Program (USP) Award for her research in our lab. Kaitlyn is a Materials Science and Engineering undergraduate student who has been working in the Schmidt Lab since Fall 2017 under the direct mentorship of postdoctoral associate Dr. Young Hye Song.
Kaitlyn’s research project has been focused on optimizing lung decellularization and digestion protocols to create hydrogels for in vitro modeling of healthy and pathological lungs. Kaitlyn is optimizing vitrification-mediated decellularization, wherein vitrification is ice-free cryopreservation of organs and tissues to prevent ice crystal formation that damages tissue architecture. For her proposal for the University Scholars award, Kaitlyn will be working on creating hydrogels for in vitro modeling of healthy and pathological lungs. These hydrogels then would be encapsulated with lung-specific cells to recapitulate healthy and diseased lung microenvironments. This project is especially exciting because it aims to develop new and gentle methods to create engineered lung scaffolds for transplantation and in vitro modeling.