As UVA begins to prepare for Final Exercises we want to thank all our graduating undergrads for all their hard work over the past years. Many of them have been part of the lab since the first summer and they have helped shape the lab and develop many of our novel procedures. They have done excellent work and we wish them the best of luck as they move forward in their scientific careers.
We will miss you all but look forward to seeing your future accomplishments.
Maura Belanger presented at the annual AAI conference held this year in Austin, Texas She presented her work on delivery of beads to lymph node slices. While there she saw some great talks and returned with a lot of new ideas for the lab. We look forward to the new insights and to following some of the scientific advancements coming out of this conference!
Congratulations to 1st-year student Alyssa Montalbine and 2nd-year student Rebecca Yoo, who each won competitive undergraduate research fellowships to fund their work in the lab this summer! Alyssa received a NanoSTAR fellowship for her work on a scaffold for an artificial lymph node, and Rebecca received a Department of Chemistry fellowship and a College Science Scholars award for her work testing the effects of fluid flow on lymph node tissue. We are excited to have them here with us this summer!
Meg, Andrew, and Prof. Pompano attended the "2nd inaugural" NanoSymposium on Engineered Health, held this year at VA Tech in Roanoke, VA. Meg and Andrew presented posters and Prof. Pompano gave a talk, and we heard lots of great science from researchers across the state.
Image credit: Dr. Jennifer Munson
We are so proud of Meg Catterton for receiving the award of "Best Poster" at the annual 3rd-year PhD student Poster Session in the Department of Chemistry. Meg presented her work on a device for local stimulation of tissue slices with a movable microfluidic port. Following the poster session, she had the opportunity to present her work to the entire department in a celebratory seminar. Great job Meg! Look for her paper coming soon.
Congratulations also to the 2nd and 3rd place winners of a great poster session!
Image credits: Dr. Jim Demas
We are honored that the Pompano lab and Rutkowski lab were awarded a 2018 Collaborative Research Project Award in the amount of $75,000 from the Carter Immunology Center. According to the program announcement,
The goal of this award is to increase the level of collaborative activity among members of the Carter Immunology Center; bring together individuals and laboratories with complementary skills and perspectives; encourage the development of multi-investigator awards, which generally have higher budgets and more comprehensive scope of research activities; and to drive high quality science and encourage its translation into treatments for disease.
We are excited to begin work on a new model of tumor immunity for this project! This award was generously funded by the Carter Foundation.
Dr. Pompano and Jennifer Ortiz flew to Phoenix to present at MRS 2018 (Materials Research Society national meeting), in a special 2-day symposium on Immuno-modulatory biomaterials. The symposium was organized by Susan Thomas (GA Tech), Evan Scott (Northwestern), and Kara Spiller (Drexel). Such exciting science is being done in this area, led by a wonderful community of researchers -- we are excited to see the innovations to come.
PhD student Andrew Kinman represented our lab at Pittcon this year in Orlando in late February. He presented his exciting recent work in the Sunday poster session at this national gathering of analytical chemists. Many thanks to those who offered feedback on his project, a microfluidic device for optimization of protein derivatization reactions. We look forward to publishing his work in a few months!
Congratulations to Austin for successfully completing his PhD candidacy exam in February! We look forward to seeing all you accomplish.
Celebration after PhD qualifying exams were over!
Photo credit: Prof. Jim Demas
Huge news for our research: The NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has awarded our lab more than $1.4 million over five years to fund our efforts to create a new experimental model of the immune system. By combining live lymph node tissue and microfluidic technology, we will be able to look closely that the events that happen locally inside the tissue. This work will inform the development of new anti-inflammatory immunotherapies.
Many thanks to the NIH NIAID for their support, and to Prof. John Lukens for collaborating with us on this project.
pompanogroup@virginia.edu
Department of Chemistry
University of Virginia
PO BOX 400319
Charlottesville, VA22904
409 McCormick Road
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA22904
(434) 924-7723
Chemistry 107
See Getting Here for a map and directions to the Chemistry building.
Lab summit, Feb 2020
Group Picture, 2016
