January

• Profe Ana presented Sam’s work for the Rising Star Award at the Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Conference in Puerto Rico

February

• We welcomed James as a new M.S. student to the team!

March

• Zahra published her first first-author paper in our lab - a protocol to culture inactivated fibroblasts in vitro!

April

• The TMI Lab swept the Gator Attributes Awards! Zahra received the Integrity Award for Ph.D. students, Morgenne the Service to the Global Community Award, and Ava the Dean Earl Award for service!

• Profe Ana was recognized as an Emering Leader by the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering!

May

• We said goodbye to graduating BME seniors Ava, Morgenne and Isabella. We will miss you!

• We welcomed 3 undergraduate students: David, Gargi, and Kiefer, and 1 M.S. student, Javier, to the lab!

June

• Profe Ana was elected vice co-chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Signal Transduction in Engineered Extracellular Matrices!

January

• Karen became an NIH Basic Microbiology and Infectious Disease T32 Fellow!

February

• Josh was awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!

• Josh and Karen received the Professional Excellence and Service to the Global Community Awards at the HWCOE Award Ceremony!

October

• Aniyah, our 2025 AHA REU student, presented her work at BMES!

• We welcome Daniel Basto Moreno, new Ph.D. student to the lab!

November

• Zahra and Profe Ana presented their work at the American Society for Matrix Biology!

• We welcomed M.S. student Nikhila to the lab!

• Our review on in vitro models of human-microbiome interactions led by Karen is live!

December

• Krishna, our new lab manager joined the lab! Welcome, Krishna!

• Sam published her work on TMAO as a driver of fibroblast activation in the valve!

February

• Profe Ana receives the AAAS Early Career Public Engagement with Science Award!

March

• We welcome visiting Ph.D. student Katherine Bauer Estrada from UniSabana in Colombia!

April

• Alejandro and Tanmayee defend their honors thesis!

• Karen wins Best Graduate Poster at our Local Society for Biomaterials Day and Josh wins Best Poster at the SHPE Engineering Research Symposium!

May

• Profe Ana accepts the Society for Biomaterials Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award on behalf of LatinXinBME!

• Sam and Zahra pass the department comprehensive examination - their first milestone towards the Ph.D.!

• Marcos is accepted into the University Scholars Program!

June

• Karen and Sam presented posters at ASM!

August

• We published our first paper (yay Tia and Josh) in collaboration with the Kima lab! This paper reviews in vitro models to study parasitic tropical infections.

September

• Karen, Sam, and Zahra presented posters at the Society for Biomaterials Southeast Regional Meeting!

• Profe Ana is awarded a Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at NIH!

October

• Marcos, Josh, and Zahra presented posters at the Annual BMES Meeting in Baltimore!

• Profe Ana accepted the Biomedical Engineering Society Diversity Lecture Award on behalf of LatinXinBME!

• Profe Ana participated in a panel on virtual exchange and co-led a workshop on leveraging ChatGPT to build global competencies in the classroom at the AACU Conference on Global Learning

December

• Tanmayee graduated with her BS in Biomedical Engineering! We will miss her!

May

• Alejandro wins the Attributes of a Gator Engineer Award for Service to the Global Community!

October

• Karen and Sam presented their work at BMES!

November

• Josh presented his first poster at ABRCMS!

December

• Zahra presented her first poster at the Advances in IBD Conference!