STUDENTS
RECOGNITION AND REWARD Prestigious fellowships will further graduate research
18
TWO BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING STUDENTS HAVE RECEIVED GRADUATE RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM (GRFP) AWARDS FROM THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION. The GRFP is a competitive program that recognizes and supports outstanding students who are pursuing research-based graduate degrees in science and engineering. Courtney Kay Carlson and Kimmai Phan are among 24 GRFP awardees from UCI who will receive three years of annual funding. Carlson, who is earning a doctorate, works to engineer mammalian cells that will be able to record their own developmental history as they proliferate within living tissue. “There are many exciting applications for these engineered cells,” said Carlson, who is advised by Assistant Professor Chang Liu. The cells could benefit developmental biologists trying to understand complex multicellular organisms and be useful for clinical studies trying to uncover the causes of developmental disorders, congenital heart disease or cancer progression.
Carlson also won a two-year fellowship from the American Heart Association. She will receive $53,000 from the AHA in support of her research. Phan, who graduated last spring with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering and a minor in materials science and engineering, worked in the lab of her adviser, Assistant Professor Tim Downing. Her project, in collaboration with Associate Professor Anna Grosberg, sought to determine whether DNA methylation, an important epigenetic mechanism, plays a role in the topography-mediated maturity of cardiac muscle cells. “Being the daughter of parents with chronic diseases, I’ve always been interested in the intersection of medicine and engineering therapies to combat illnesses,” said Phan. “Understanding fundamentally how tissues and disease function at the gene expression level is so powerful as a tool to improve patient care and medicine.”
UCI Department of Biomedical Engineering
