Welcome, award-winning summer researchers

We welcome Meredith Davis, Bond Sittipongpittaya, and Erica Kem to the lab IN PERSON for the summer! It is a delight to have our talented undergraduates in the lab again after a long COVID-driven year.

All three won awards to fund their summer work!

• Meredith received a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Biomanufacturing

• Bond received a Dept of Chemistry Summer Research Fellowship

• Erica received a DoubleHoo award, together with her graduate mentor Alex Ball.

Congrats to all three on this incredible set of accomplishments.

Meredith and Bond are working on computational and experimental models of cytokine transit and capture in the lymph node, and Erica is working on a new probe to measure glucose uptake in vaccinated lymph nodes. We are looking forward to all that you will learn this summer!

Alex + Erica win Double Hoo Research Grant

We heartily congratulate undergraduate researcher Erica Kem and graduate student Alex Ball, who were awarded a well-deserved Double Hoo Research Grant! This will fund their research together to measure the response of lymph nodes after vaccination with different adjuvants. They conceived of and drafted their proposal themselves, so we are extra proud of them.

The Double Hoo Research Grant supports between 10-15 pairs of undergraduate and graduate students from across the university each year. The program is intended to build collaborative interactions between the undergraduate and graduate communities throughout the University. These collaborations provide opportunities for more advanced research by undergraduates and valuable mentoring experiences for graduate students.

Sophie wins GSAC Research Grant!

We heartily congratulate Sophie, who was awarded a Spring 2021 research grant from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Council.  These are competitive awards and an honor to receive.  She wrote a compelling proposal to further her development of a miniaturized recirculating pump with a brand new 3D printer that is safe to use from home during the ongoing pandemic, plus parts for a new type of motor.  Excellent work, Sophie!

 http://gradcouncil.com/research/gsasc-research-grant

Hannah enters PhD candidacy!

Congratulations to 2nd year student Hannah Musgrove, who earned a Pass on the PhD candidacy exam this month. She is now officially a PhD candidate. We look forward to seeing her research develop in the area of 3D printed microchips and hybrid tissue-chips. Congrats Hannah!

Welcome new group members

Despite the pandemic slow down, the Pompano Lab was able to welcome three new group members this fall! We are delighted to work with each of these talented scientists and to see them take charge of new research directions.

Amirus Saleheen, PhD

Postdoctoral Scholar

Dr. Saleheen joined the lab in August, 2020. He obtained his BS in Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the Univ. of Dhaka, Bagladesh, and his PhD in Chemistry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His graduate work consisted of developing a novel microfluidic chip to mimic rotary tube culture of rodent brain slices, to improve the temporal resolution of downstream perfusate analysis. He also developed a smartphone based quantitative analysis method for epinephrine in expired or discolored auto-injectors, to help those old EpiPens stay usable. In the Pompano lab, Amirus will be working on robust fluidic control methods and stimulation of a lymph-node-on-a-chip model.

Dr. Ozulumba joined the lab in October, 2020. She obtained her BS and MS degrees in Biochemistry at the Univ. of Nigeria, and then completed a PhD in Biomaterials Science at the Univ. of Brighton, United Kingdom. Her PhD project investigated the potential of two-dimensional graphene and titanium carbide MXene nanomaterials to target biological toxins and the incorporation of these materials into composite systems for use in medical devices. In the Pompano lab, Tochukwu will be working on controlling immune cell interactions with biomaterial in a spatially organized microphysiological model of a lymph node.

Tochukwu Ozulumba, PhD

Postdoctoral Scholar

Lavoisier Akoolo, PhD, DVM

Immunology Research Scientist

Dr. Akoolo joined the lab in October, 2020. He graduated with a DVM and MS from the Univ. of Nairobi in Nairobi, Kenya, and worked as a Veterinarian in the Ministry of Livestock, Kenya, before moving to Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, where he graduated with a PhD in Veterinary Pathology in 2015. Lavoisier completed postdoctoral training in microbial pathogenesis at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, leading to several publication in microbiology and immunology. In the Pompano lab, he will be expanding the use of live slices of lymph node tissue as an ex vivo model of immunity.

Presentations at MicroTAS and BMES

The Pompano lab was out in force at the virtual MicroTAS 2020, with the majority of the group attending. PhD student Sophie Cook presented her poster on a modular micro-culture system with a novel media pump. Prof. Pompano presented in the pre-conference workshop on Organs-on-Chip, with a tutorial on incorporating tissue and immune functions into microphysiological systems. Plus she had fun as a poster judge!

The next week, PhD student Megan Catterton presented a virtual on-demand talk at virtual BMES 2020. She spoke on her and undergraduate Tim Freeman’s work measuring diffusion through inflamed lymph nodes.

Congrats to everyone for their involvement! We look forward to returning to these conferences in person next year.

Meg at BMES 2020

Sophie at MicroTAS 2020

Congrats Andrew Kinman, PhD, & Austin Dunn, MS

July was an eventful month for the Pompano lab, with two defenses and graduations!

First, Andrew Kinman successfully defended his dissertation and earned his PhD, then stayed a few more weeks to wrap up and pass on his projects to Pargat Singh. His excellent presentation was titled, “Modification and Application of Antibodies and Their Fragments for Immunostaining in Live Lymphatic Tissue Slices.”

Next, Austin Dunn defended his Master’s thesis and earned his MS degree! Look for his paper coming soon on his exciting project, “Spatially Resolved Measurement of Dynamic Glucose Uptake in Live Ex Vivo Tissues”.

CIC Collaborative Research Award

CIC Collaborative award to begin July, 2020!

We are honored to be awarded a Collaborative Research Award from the Carter Immunology Center, together with colleagues Kimberly Kelly (Prof. of Biomedical Engineering) and Tajie Harris (Prof. of Neuroscience). This substantial seed funding for a unique collaboration gives us a chance to develop a brand new technology to see into cell-cell communication in tissue. Look for more details in a few months!

Congratulations, Dr. Maura Belanger

We are very proud of Dr. Maura Belanger for successfully defending her PhD in April, 2020, and graduating today in UVA Chemistry’s virtual graduation ceremony!

Maura was one of the first two graduate students to join the laboratory. She helped establish much of the foundational science that now informs our efforts to study immunity ex vivo. Along the way, she was awarded a fellowship on the Immunology Training Grant, contributed to 2 co-author papers, 2 first-author papers, and is currently leading the writing of a comprehensive review for submission this summer. Congratulations Maura for all of your achievements!

Paper: Blue particles to label cells

Congratulations to Maura Belanger and Meng Zhuang from the Fraser lab for the publication of their work in Biomaterials Science. This project was initiated by talented undergraduate Kristen Richey several years ago.

We show that boron based, blue-fluorescent nanoparticles make good labels for endocytic immune cells in fluorescence imaging or flow cytometry. 

Take advantage of that underutilized blue channel on your microscope.

Advance article accessible here: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2020/BM/C9BM01572H