Margaret B
- Research Program Mentor
PhD at University of Pennsylvania (UPenn)
Expertise
Ionizable Lipid Nanoparticles, Nucleic Acid Delivery, Drug Delivery, Bioengineering, Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cells, Cancer Immunology
Bio
I'm a biomedical engineer with a background in drug delivery, and I'm passionate about exploring biomaterials for nanoparticle-based therapies and immunotherapies. I've worked with gold, lipid, and polymer nanoparticles to deliver a variety of therapies (including small molecules, nucleic acids, and proteins) for different applications ranging from cancer immunotherapy to pregnancy support. I'm currently a postdoctoral associate at MIT working alongside clinicians and data scientists with a goal of developing new therapeutic strategies for the treatment of ovarian cancer. Outside of my research work, I really enjoy playing games! This includes board games and card games like Wingspan and Catan as well as video games like Stardew Valley and Baldur's Gate. I also enjoy cooking, painting, and long nature walks.Project ideas
Exploring Biomaterials for Women's Health Applications
I've worked on numerous projects related to women's health applications including drug delivery in ovarian cancer, breast cancer, and pregnancy. In these research spaces, there are always many questions about sex-based differences in drug delivery, how pregnancy can affect therapeutic interventions, and how to better design biomaterials for women's health. This project would look to explore the ongoing research related to biomaterials specifically utilized in women's health applications. The student can decide how to further narrow the topic depending on their interests (i.e., biomaterials for pregnancy, drug delivery in the female reproductive tract, etc). This work could focus on either preclinical or clinical research related to women's health as the student reviews current literature and/or clinical studies exploring this topic. The student could then create a written report with schematics-- a scientific review, commentary, or blogpost-- on the observed data and any emerging trends that seem relevant. The overall goals would be to get more comfortable finding and reading scientific articles and to practice summarizing these different sources cohesively.
Images of Immunotherapy
Immunology is an exciting field, but it can also be very intimidating with its various acronyms, many cell types, and intricate systems. This can make explaining interventions like immunotherapies or vaccines to a broad audience challenging. In this project, the student will investigate different aspects of the immune system in healthy and diseased states and create educational material explaining these systems to a broad audience. (This could be an informational video, packet, presentation, etc that features informative figures for different levels of understanding.) The goal of this project will be for the student to work on gathering scientific information (i.e., reading scientific articles and reviews) and clearly communicating their findings through visual representations.