News & Events

Welcome to the Fall semester! We had a great time celebrating with lots of food in traditional pot luck fashion, engaging conversation, billiards and board games!

Photo:

Front Row, L to R: Anouska Seal, Kennedy Moes, Allison Campbell, Amanda Juraski, Angiolina Dall’Acqua

Back Row, L to R: Leina Owens, Abiah Sentic, Gopal Agarwal, Blanca Ostmark, Christine Schmidt, Chase Tucker, Collin Klaus

Wonderful job by my trainees today! We had our Spring UG research presentations. Extra congratulations to our graduating students – Samantha Shumard and Izabella Zmirska for receiving their BS degrees in BME, and Dr. Xander Lim (co-advised with Dr. Kevin Otto, now Head of BME at Purdue) for receiving his PhD in BME! We celebrated afterwards at Chuy’s, and celebrated Samantha’s and Izabella’s graduation at the BME Pinning Ceremony.

Proud of our Schmidt Lab trainees — Allison Campbell, PhD student, and Ethan McMillan, MS student — discussing their research on developing injectable therapies for spinal cord injury (SCI) at UF Biomaterials Day 2025.

Congratulations to our UF BME PhD student, Allison Campbell, who was selected for the UF T32 Neuromuscular Plasticity Training Program (NMPT), overseen by Drs. Fuller, Vandenborne, and Judge. Allison is researching injectable hydrogel/drug therapies for Spinal Cord Injury (SCI).

So proud of our postdoc, Dr. Gopal Agarwal, who gave a fantastic kick-off talk at the North Central Florida (NCF) Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience (SFN). He showcased his impactful work on developing injectable therapeutics for spinal cord injury (SCI) treatment.

Allison was selected to participate in an industry internship with Dow Chemical in Michigan, as part of the “2023-2024 Campus Internship – Digital Innovation – Cross-functional (Ph.D)”. She will be working in the Toxicology and Environmental Research and Consulting department. Kudos to Allison!

Another great set of Schmidt Lab UG Research presentations! Congratulations to our amazing students who contribute so much to our research endeavors! We sadly bid farewell to Steven Robles-Blasini, as he moves to a new lab for different research exposure.

Congratulations to Schmidt Lab UG researchers, Kennedy Moes

and Izabela Zmirska, on being selected as 2024-25 University Scholars. Kennedy researches injectable hydrogels for spinal cord injury, under the mentorship of Dr. Gopal Agarwal, and Izabela works under the mentorship of Allison Campbell investigating development of hydrogel-based inks for biological 3D printing. Congratulations, Kennedy and Izabela!

Congratulations to our outstanding undergraduate researcher, Izabela Zmirska, for receiving the prestigious 2024 Barry Goldwater Scholarship. Only 508 awarded across the US. This is the second Goldwater recipient from our lab. Izabela works under the mentorship of Allison Campbell investigating development of hydrogel-based inks for biological 3D printing. She will be at Columbia University this summer as part of an REU. Kudos, Izabela!

https://news.ufl.edu/2024/04/goldwater

Oct. 30, 2023

We had fun celebrating all the lab successes of the semester and bidding farewell to Schmidt Lab postdoc, Dr. Eleana Manousiouthakis. Always a good time at Chuy’s! Wonderful team and great roast presented by Blanca!