GRADUATE STUDENT AMBASSADORS
Bianca David is a third-year Ph.D. student working in Dr. Shalini Prasad’s lab at the Biomedical Microdevices and Nanotechnology Laboratory (BMNL). Her research is dedicated to developing a point-of-care biosensor for the early detection of inflammatory biomarkers for disease diagnostic purposes.
Mari is from Mililani, Hawai’i. She is currently a sixth-year PhD student in Dr. Miller’s Biomechanics of Growth and Remodeling Lab. Her research focuses on how the function of the uterus changes with age and postpartum recovery. She hopes her work can help address knowledge gaps to improve outcomes in women’s health.
Third-year PhD student Sumedha Guha works in the Biomaterials for Osseointegration and Novel Engineering (BONE) Lab under the guidance of Dr. Danieli Rodrigues. Her research focuses on surface characterization of titanium and nitinol implants, characterization of novel ionic liquid coatings to improve implant integration in immunocompromised individuals and validating biomechanical testing methods to evaluate bone-implant interfacial properties.
Second-year Ph.D. student Paulina Treviño works in the Vascular Mechanobiology Lab under the guidance of Dr. Heather Hayenga. Her work focuses on optimizing predictive models of plaque growth in coronary artery disease through the inclusion of hormones and lipid-lowering treatments.
Triniti Vanoven, a third-year Ph.D. student, is conducting research in the Pence Lab at UT Southwestern Medical Center under the guidance of Dr. Isaac Pence. Triniti’s current research focuses on utilizing optical technologies to characterize pelvic organ prolapse, working in collaboration with the Biomechanics of Growth and Remodeling (BG&R) to develop a noninvasive tool that can correlate optical biomarkers and tissue mechanics.