Big congratulations to Dr. Tochukwu Ozulumba, Dr. Jennifer Ortiz Cárdenas, and Alyssa Montalbine for writing a wonderful review about models of the lymph node, now online at Frontiers in Immunology! This review captures the state of the art in in vitro, ex vivo, and computation models of lymph node function, as well as the associated challenges and opportunities. It is open access, so enjoy the read!
Congratulations to Izzy for receiving the Lester Andrews Undergraduate Research Fellowship in UVA Chemistry!
This award will fund her work this summer, as she pivots from her nearly-completed project on analyzing the crosslinking of biomaterials, to using those biomaterials to advance cell responses in our lymph node chip system. She and her mentor Jon Zatorski took a big leap to write up the proposal on the next project, and it paid off. Congratulations Izzy on this great accomplishment!
Professor Pompano and Parris Present at Pittcon!
Parris Anbaei and Prof. Pompano travelled to Philadelphia for the first in-person Pittcon since 2020. We had a great time catching up with colleagues, and getting feedback on our research after two invited talks. Prof. Pompano presented in a symposium organized by lab alumna, Prof. Ashley Ross (Univ. Cincinnati), and Parris presented in a session organized by Sally Gowers from the Boutelle lab (Imperial College, UK).
Congratulations to Hannah for winning the Department of Chemistry's Hecht Fellowship for 2023-2024!
This is a very prestigious award that recognizes her excellence in research and leadership in the department. We are so proud of her many accomplishments!
Congratulations to Djuro for earning the Chemistry Department Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award!
Please join in congratulating Djuro for this well-earned achievement! Djuro has excelled as a teacher and as Head TA, a position that he was specially chosen for this year. Every week, Djuro helps oversee the learning of more than 1400 students and several dozen TAs. Great job Djuro!
Congratulations to Tiffany and Parris for the Harrison Fellowship!
This award will fund Tiffany's work this summer to look at the impact of oxygen availability and culture conditions on long-term human tonsil tissue culture. It's an area that we are all excited to move into, and also synergizes well with the experiments that Sahana and Erin are planning in mouse tissue. I am looking forward to seeing what we learn from these experiments! Congratulations Tiffany!
Congratulations to Morgan and Katerina for the Double Hoo Award!
This award will fund their work together this summer to look at how the tumor draining lymph nodes are remodeled before and after metastasis in a breast cancer model. This exciting project will lay a foundation for understanding the factors that drive tumor cell invasion into the lymph nodes during metastasis, and enable improved models of metastasis and therapies in the future. Congratulations Morgan and Katerina!
First paper of 2023! Easy fab bubble traps
Congrats to Hannah Musgrove, Amirus (Ovi) Saleheen, and Jon Zatorski on their latest paper, now published in Micromachines as part of the Womens Special Issue! To address the perennial problem of bubbles arising in the tubing of microfluidic cultures and organs-on-chip, they adapted a previously described, passive bubble trap design for fabrication by 3Dprinting or by high-throughput machining. These two fabrication methods enable reproducible, low-cost fabrication at moderate or large throughput, respectively. We share the design files in the linked Dataverse site, so feel free to try them out!
New paper: 3D printed microfluidic inlets
Congratulations to Hannah Musgrove on her second publication, which is part of the Chips & Tips blog associated with Lab on a Chip. She shares her elegant design for a robust, printable microfluidic port in the post, with detailed instructions. If you are or ever will be 3D printing plastic microfluidic chips, you've faced the chip-to-world problem. Hannah's design works well for SLA and DLP printing, including for small microfluidic tubing. This posting went through editorial review and revision, and we are delighted to share it.
Musgrove HB and Pompano RR. “Threadless chip-to-world connections on resin 3D printed microscale devices.” In Chips & Tips (2022), a curated open access blog associated with Lab on a Chip.
Pompano Lab at MicroTAS 2022
The Pompano Lab had a great time at MicroTAS 2022, held in China, October 23-27, 2022. We attended virtually and were very proud of Sophie Cook's midnight oral presentation, and Hannah Musgrove's poster on Monday. Prof. Pompano was the Co-Chair of the Weekend Workshop series, a series of eight tutorial workshops with approximately 24 speakers from around the world. These were a pleasure to see go off smoothly, and the participants learned so much from our experts.
