Pre-med student looks to better understand women’s healthcare in the U.S. and how to improve it

Zaida Alvarez won the Women in Science Nanotechnology Award from Muy Interesante, a monthly science magazine in Spain. The award recognized her first-author publication in Science, which described the development of an injectable therapy that reversed paralysis in mice following severe spinal cord injury.

Postdoctoral fellow Luka Dordevic was named one of six finalists for the European Young Chemists’ Award at the early career researcher level. The award is given every two years to recognize and reward young chemists with outstanding achievements. All finalists will present their research on Aug. 30 at the European Chemical Society’s Chemistry Congress, with the top two presenters receiving gold and silver medals, respectively.

Downing and Lee were named winners at the 39th Annual John E. Hilliard Lecture and Symposium

Zaida Alvarez has received the Rafael Hervada Award for Biomedical Research in recognition of her recent first-author paper in Science describing an injectable therapy that reversed paralysis in mice following severe spinal cord injuries. The Hervada Award honors innovation in scientific and medical research, and is considered one of the top prizes awarded in Spain for biomedical research.

Graduate student Shelby Yuan was named a 2021 Baxter Young Investigator Award winner for her work on “TGF-β1 Mimetic Peptide Amphiphiles for Cartilage Regeneration.” This marks the third consecutive year that a Stupp laboratory member has won a Baxter Award, as Alexandra Kolberg-Edelbrock and Zaida Alvarez received the honor in 2020 and 2019, respectively.

Hiroaki Sai is a research associate in the Stupp laboratory. He first joined the group as a postdoctoral research fellow in the fall of 2014 after earning a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Cornell University in 2013.

Lesley Chow, an Associate Professor of Bioengineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Lehigh University, received the Mid-Career Award from the Society for Biomaterials (SFB). The award recognizes an individual SFB member who has demonstrated outstanding achievements in and/or contributions to the field of biomaterials research.

Stupp Lab alum Joel Finbloom recently joined the faculty at the University of British Columbia as an Assistant Professor of Nanomedicine and Chemical Biology. Finbloom performed undergraduate research on dynamic materials for drug delivery applications in the Stupp group. He then completed his PhD in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, before a postdoctoral stint at the University of California, San Francisco.

Liz Appelt, a former undergraduate in the Stupp laboratory, spent her summer helping a South Africa-based biotechnology company prepare its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine for animal and clinical trials — part of an initiative to increase vaccine production in low- and middle-income countries. During a three-month internship, Appelt learned the company’s laboratory techniques, helped validate its Good Manufacturing Practices facility, and worked on documentation and compliance with regulatory authorities. She is currently a fourth-year PhD candidate in Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Former Stupp group postdoc Dennis Cao, now an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Macalester College, received a 2022 Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. The award honors young faculty in the chemical sciences who have created an outstanding independent body of scholarship and are deeply committed to education with undergraduates. Each winner receives an unrestricted research grant of $75,000.

Aaron Amstutz, a former master’s student in the Stupp laboratory, has been named Inventor of the Year by the Intellectual Property Owners Education Foundation along with Luke Haverhals. The two chemists, both with Natural Fiber Welding, were recognized for inventing materials that are naturally low carbon and completely circular. The company aims to create sustainable, plastic-free materials for a variety of products, including clothing, upholstery, footwear, and automobile interiors.

Arizona State University researchers including former Stupp group member Nicholas Stephanopoulos published the first systematic study of Holliday junctions, basic building blocks used in the fabrication of many DNA nanoforms. The work, published in Nature Communications, used crystallography techniques to describe the characteristics of 36 basic variants of the Holliday junction.

Former Stupp laboratory member Helen Zha and colleagues successfully grafted broad-spectrum antimicrobial polymers onto the polypropylene filters used in N95 face masks, according to a study published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. The antiviral and antibacterial masks may be worn for longer periods of time, which would result in less plastic waste as the masks would not need to be replaced as often.

Tristan Clemons was a Research Associate in the Stupp laboratory and is now an Assistant Professor in the School of Polymer Science and Engineering at the University of Southern Mississippi. In this Q&A, Clemons discusses his Rising Stars of SQI Lecture, highlights from his time in the Stupp group and how his experience as an elite athlete benefits his research career.