Dr. Pompano traveled to beautiful Puerto Rico to present our lab’s work on micropatterned 3D cultures at CMBE 2020. This conference featured a fascinating mix of chemical and molecular analysis and engineering, and new and old friends.
Pompano lab in Switzerland
We had a great time presenting at MicroTAS 2019, in Basel, Switzerland, where Meg and Andrew each presented a poster on their research. Prof. Pompano served on the Technical Program Committee and also the Poster Judging committee, and so got to see a wide array of excellent work.
Pictures coming soon.
Meg presents at SciX
In October 2019, PhD student Megan Catterton represented the lab at SciX 2019 in the ANACHEM Award award session, a session in honor of Prof. Robert Kennedy receiving the ANACHEM award. Held in Palm Springs, CA, this special symposium included leaders in the field of microfluidics for bioanalysis. Meg made us proud!
NIH U01 for Lymph Node Chip
This week we learned that we have officially been awarded a $3.3 million dollar grant to generate the world’s first spatially organized micro-physiological model of a human lymph node. This U01 award from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) at the National Institutes of Heath provides 5 years of funding for this project.
We are delighted to work with a stellar team of researchers, including:
Jennifer Munson, PhD at Virginia Tech
John Luckey, MD, UVA Pathology
Tom Braciale, MD PhD, UVA Pathology
As new members of the NIH-sponsored Organ-on-chip Consortium, we are looking forward to bringing a lymph node to the burgeoning human-on-chip system!
Summer outing to Walnut Creek
We took our second annual summer lab outing on Friday July 19, with a trip to beautiful Walnut Creek in Albemarle County, VA. Hiking, swimming, canoeing, and sand castles kept us happy despite the near 100 degree heat.
Hiding in the shade.
Keeping cool in the water.
Not pictured but in attendance: Sangjo Shim and his family!
Protein conjugation chip funded by NIH
Today the Pompano lab is celebrating a notice of funding for our focused R03 proposal. In collaboration with the Landers lab, we are building a microchip to help researchers efficiently add fluorophores to proteins without trial and error.
Many thanks to the National Institutes of Health, specifically the NIBIB (National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering), for funding this exciting work.
Kudos to PhD student Andrew Kinman for leading this project and helping craft a successful grant proposal.
Visit to Chinese University of Hong Kong
It was very special to be invited to speak at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the department of Chemistry, meeting up with former Ismagilov-lab colleague Prof. Bo Zheng for the day. Plus we got a beautiful view from the top of the mountain that this unique university is built upon.
Microfluidics GRC in Hong Kong
Prof. Pompano and Jennifer Ortiz made the trek to Hong Kong to present in the 2019 Gordon Research Conference for Physics and Chemistry of Microfluidics. It was a wonderful conference, filled with much exciting new data as well as new and old friends. Plus we had a great time exploring. Jenn’s poster, Rebecca’s poster on Meg and Sophie’s recent work, and Rebecca’s short talk went over well and we received lots of valuable feedback. Look for papers on these topics soon!
Prof. Pompano featured in LabRoots virtual event
Prof. Pompano was an invited speaker for the LabRoots virtual event on Laboratory Testing & Automation 2019 on May 30. This is a free online conference featuring leaders in microfluidics giving presentations and tutorials on their work. You can stream it online for several months afterwards at http://bit.ly/lab-auto-2019 .
Supporting young researchers at science fair
In March, Pompano Lab member Maura Belanger volunteered as a judge for the 2019 Virginia Piedmont Regional Science Fair, where hundreds high school and middle school students from all over the state came and shared their projects! This annual event is a great way to get students interested in science and interact with the community at large. It’s always an inspiration to see these students get excited about sharing their experiments! Congrats to all the winners this year!!
