NEWS — 2026

We are excited to officially welcome Centaine Joseph (Chemical Engineering PhD student) to the lab! Centaine is co-advised by Prof. Sarah Heilshorn in Materials Science & Engineering and plans to explore new therapeutic biomaterials based on self-assembled elastin-like polypeptides.

Amanda was awarded a DPOLY Outstanding Student Poster Presentation Award at the American Physical Society Global Summit! Congratulations on a successful presentation of her summer research with Eleanor investigating nanocapsule incorporation strategies to enhance polymer network properties!

Amanda Rosario poster on Nanocapsule Incorporation Strategies to Enhance Polymer Network Properties

Amanda with certificates for the DPOLY undergraduate travel award and the DPOLY student poster award

Eleanor was selected to participate in "Science Outside the Lab" by the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI)! This program brings a small cohort of scientists and engineers to Washington, D.C. to explore the relationships among science, innovation, and policy. Congrats!

Alana was awarded a Student Research Achievement Award for their poster presentation at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting! Congratulations!

Jennie was selected as a 2026 VPUE STEM Fellow! This fellowship will support her research this summer, as well as a future conference presentation. Congrats!

Michelle was selected to participate in the 2026 RapiData short course at SSRL! She is excited to engage in hands-on experiments at the SSRL beamlines, software tutorials, and lectures on topics in X-ray diffraction and biomolecular structure determination.

Danielle gave a student-invited seminar for the CBI Training Program at the University of Illinois! Thanks to Freddy Ward (Kong Lab) for the invitation to return to her alma mater and share the lab’s latest work in the same lecture hall where Danielle "grew up" learning from department seminars and running review sessions for undergraduate thermodynamics. (photo credit: Simon Rogers)

Brendan received a Bio-X Travel Award to support his attendance at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Congrats!

Danielle stands in front of an acknowledgments slide

group photo, enjoying cookies from crumbl after a day-long retreat

Our 2026 lab retreat stayed local and finished with a sweet treat! We are excited for the new year!