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News & Events

What's happening in SITE Lab?

2024

Publications

Trophies

Awards & Milestones

  • Sabrina VandenHeuvel won best poster award during the 2024 graduate research symposium at Texas A&M University!

  • Lucy Nash won the TAMU Horizons Fellow!

  • Karla Ortega Sandoval won the T32 Fellowship!

  • Kate Maier won the TAMU engineering Merit Fellow!

  • ​Dr. Shreya Raghavan won the prestigious Innovative Teaching Fellowship at Texas A&M!

  • Arpita Mohapatra successfully graduated with her Masters of Science!

  • Dr. Abbie Clevenger is the first to graduate as a Ph.D. student in the Raghavan Lab!

  • Sabrina VandenHeuvel has won a GSA Travel Award!

  • Claudia Collier is a doctoral candidate!

  • Claudia Collier was selected for the 2024 Science Mentoring and Diversity Program fellowship!

  • Dr. Abbie Clevenger won the BME Outstanding Graduate Student Award!

  • Claudia Collier won the BME Graduate Student Exceptional Service Award!

Female Presenter

Presentations

  • Sabrina VandenHeuvel presented a rapid fire talk on macrophage tumor interactions at 2024 Society for Biomaterials Southwest Regional; and Dr. Abbie Clevenger and Claudia Collier presented posters!

  • Claudia Collier presented her work on enteric neural stem cell repairment in Gulf War illness at Digestive Disease Week in Washington D.C!

  • Dr. Abbie Clevenger presented her work on KRAS mutations role in peristalsis as a featured "Future Leaders of Mechanobiology" at CMBE. 

Dollars

Funding

  • Dr. Raghavan was awarded an CDMRP DOD Award to fund our potential therapeutics for Gulf War illness!

Ocean Rocks

Other News

  • The Raghavan lab grows! We welcomed three new doctoral students (Lucy, Kate, and Karla) and one post-doctoral student (Astha)!

  • The ElevateHER Conference was a success, led by Dr. Shreya Raghavan and Dr. Erika Moore!

2023

Publications

  • Abbie and her team of undergraduates published their findings on how peristalsis mechanics push colorectal cancer progression in Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering.

  • Sabrina and Dillon publish on breast cancer lung metastasis using engineered lung biomatrices in Science Advances.

  • Claudia publishes her findings on Gulf War Illness in Advanced Biology.

  • Abbie and Sabrina developed methods to test biocompatibility of liquid crystal elastomers, published in Biomaterials.

Trophies

Awards & Milestones

  • Sabrina VandenHeuvel was awarded a Collaboration & Community Engagement Abstract Award at the Drexel University Immune Modulation and Engineering Symposium!

  • Aelita Salikhova won the Wanda & Jack McMahan ‘43 Scholarship!

  • Abbie Clevenger was awarded the US Senator Phil Gramm Doctoral Fellowship!

  • Claudia Collier was awarded the NDSEG Fellowship through the Army Research Office!

  • Dr. Shreya Raghavan was awarded the BMES Rita Schaffer Young Investigator Award!

  • Sabrina VandenHeuvel won the Best Podium Presentation Award at GRS 2023!

  • Dr. Shreya Raghavan has been named a finalist for the Scientific American Cancer Community Awards!

  • Undergrads Joy Chen and Sameera Dabbiru won an Undergraduate Summer Research Grant!

  • Sabrina VandenHeuvel and Claudia Collier have received GSA Travel Awards to attend BMES!

  • Dr. Shreya Raghavan has been named a Young Innovator by the BMES-CMBE Journal!

  • Sabrina VandenHeuvel and Abbie Clevenger are doctoral candidates!

Female Presenter

Presentations

  • Sabrina VandenHeuvel gave a talk on her work on ovarian cancer nano-immunotherapy at the Drexel Immune Modulation and Engineering Symposium in Philadelphia!

  • Abbie Clevenger gave a talk at the Gordon Research Conference Physics of Cancer in Galveston.

  • Graduate students Claudia Collier and Abbie Clevenger gave talks at the annual BMES meeting in Seattle, Sabrina presented a poster!

  • Dr. Raghavan gave the Rita Schaffer plenary lecture at BMES on Oct. 14.

  • Dr. Raghavan gave a research talk in the CMBE Young Innovators special session.

  • Joy Chen presented her undergraduate research through the Undergraduate Summer Research Grant symposium.

Dollars

Funding

  • Dr. Raghavan was awarded an NIH R37 MERIT Award to fund our colorectal cancer liver metastasis work!

  • Dr. Raghavan was awarded a CPRIT Texas Regional Excellence in Cancer to establish a center for cancer research at Texas A&M!

2022

Publications

Trophies

Awards & Milestones

  • Sabrina VandenHeuvel was named a national finalist for the PEO Scholar Award!

  • Claudia Collier received an Honorable Mention on her NSF GRFP!

  • Undergrad Vibha Sheshadri is awarded the Undergraduate Excellence in Research Award

  • Undergrads Del Donehoo and Anirudh Madyastha won an Undergraduate Summer Research Grant!

  • Dr. Raghavan was awarded the Center for Teaching Excellence Montague Scholars Award, for excellence in undergraduate teaching.

  • Dr. Raghavan was named an Emerging Leader in Biological Engineering by the Journal of Biological Engineering!

Female Presenter

Presentations

  • Graduate students Claudia Collier, Abbie Clevenger, Sabrina VandenHeuvel and Valentina Garcia gave presentations at BMES about their research and STEM Outreach!

  • Grad student Sabrina VandenHeuvel presented her ovarian cancer metastasis research at the annual Society for Biomaterials meeting in Baltimore.

  • Dr. Raghavan gave a talk at the CMBE Meeting, and gave several seminars nation-wide.

  • Undergrads Del and Anirudh presented their research at Student Research Week

Dollars

Funding

  • The Raghavan lab was awarded a grant from Shape Memory Medical Inc to evaluate immunocompatibility of their aneurysm occlusion devices.

Dollars

Other News

  • Arpita Mohapatra joined the Raghavan Lab as a PhD Student!

  • Several of our undergraduates graduated and went on to take up industry positions!

2021

Publications

  • We were working really hard as we recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic on our scientific stories! Stay tuned for more science updates in 2021!

Trophies

Fellowships and Awards

  • Abbie received an Honorable Mention on her Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship!

  • Dr. Raghavan received a Young Investigator Award from the journal Cells Tissues Organs.

  • Dr. Raghavan and colleagues received an Honorable Mention on an essay to reimagine biomedical science through the Health Research Alliance and PLoS One

  • Claudia Collier won the Aviles-Johnson Fellowship at Texas A&M University, and joined the Raghavan Lab!

Female Presenter

Presentations

  • Abbie presented her work at the CMBE Annual Meeting in Indian Wells, CA

  • Dr. Raghavan gave a talk at the Surfaces in Biomaterials Foundation conference on evaluating in vitro immunocompatibility for implantable devices.

Dollars

Funding

  • The Raghavan lab was awarded an NIH R21 from the National Cancer Institute to study and model perineural invasion in colorectal cancers

  • The Raghavan lab was awarded a CPRIT Core Facility Grant to establish a Microphysiologic Lead Optimization and Toxicity Screening Core - this core services the entire Gulf Coast Consortium in their quest to find new therapeutics to fight cancer. 

  • The Raghavan lab was awarded a CDMRP Gulf War Illness Idea Award to ask why Gulf War veterans have impaired neural function in their guts.

Dollars

Other News

  • Claudia Collier joined the Raghavan Lab as a PhD Student and Aviles-Johnson Fellow!

  • Logan, our very first grad student, graduated and got a job with Alcon!

2020

Publications

  • We published our first paper outlining the importance of new nanomedicine approaches to target liver metastatic cancers.

Trophies

Fellowships and Awards

  • THE RAGHAVAN LAB OPENED ITS DOORS IN JANUARY 2020!

Female Presenter

Presentations

  • Logan presented his first virtual poster at BMES on a new design for a peristalsis bioreactor!

Dollars

Funding

  • The Raghavan lab was awarded its first funding from the Kaplan Gynecologic Cancer Fund through Houston Methodist Hospital!

  • The Raghavan lab was awarded a pilot grant through the T3 Triads for Transformation mechanism at Texas A&M University.

Dollars

Other News

  • Logan Crawford was our first ever graduate student! 

  • Abbie Clevenger and Sabrina VandenHeuvel joined as our first ever PhD students!

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