Category: News

Congratulations to Dr. Blanka Sharma for receiving the 2025 BME Faculty Service Excellence Award! On December 5th, Dr. Blanka Sharma was awarded the 2025 BME Faculty Service Excellence Award. This award is given to the BME primary faculty member who provided outstanding and dedicated service to the department. Dr. Sharma was selected for her work […]

GRACE Symposium Oral Presentation Award On September 19, the Graduate Association of Chemical Engineers (GRACE) hosted its annual symposium to highlight outstanding research conducted within the Department of Chemical Engineering. Touraj Amrabadi, a Ph.D. candidate in Chemical Engineering and member of the Sharma Lab, presented his work titled “Functionalized MnO₂ Nanoparticles as ROS Scavengers for […]

Victoria named UFHCC University Scholar Undergraduate researcher, Victoria Consalvo, was selected as a part of the 2025 UFHCC University Scholars Program. This prestigious award is given to undergraduate students to educate the next generation of professionals on the importance of biomedical research and scientific discoveries, specifically focused on cancer. Those selected are paired with faculty […]

Suzanne is selected for the Association of Academic Women’s Emerging Scholar Honorable Mention Award! Suzanne Lightsey, a 5th year PhD student, was selected by the Madelyn Lockhart Dissertation Awards Committee for the 2024 Association for Academic Women’s (AAW) Emerging Scholar Honorable Mention Award. AAW at the University of Florida established the Madelyn Lockhart Dissertation Fellowship […]

Sharma Lab sweeps at the 2025 Biomaterials Day On Thursday, March 13th, the Sharma Lab disseminated their research at the 14th Annual UF Biomaterials Day. The theme of this year’s Biomaterials Day was “Building Tomorrow with Biomaterials Today.” Suzanne, a fifth year PhD student, gave a podium presentation on her research and Rylee, Tomas, Touraj, and […]

A BIG congratulations to Gabriella Flinn for earning an engineering co-op position at Vertex in Providence, Rhode Island. Gabby will join the Device Immunology team led by Tania Baltazar where she will continue the development of cutting-edge solutions for individuals battling type 1 diabetes. Although we are sad to lose Gabby this spring, we are […]

A HUGE congratulations to Natalia for earning an engineering co-op position at Edwards Lifesciences in Irvine, California. Natalia will be joining a team where she will continue the development of cutting-edge solutions for individuals battling cardiovascular disease. Although we are sad to lose Natalia this spring, we are excited to see the unique perspective she […]

During the annual BME Holiday party, Suzanne Lightsey was awarded the Graduate Student Excellence Award for her contributions to the J Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering. This award is given to the registered BME graduate student who has excelled in her coursework, research, service to the department, and leadership– all of which Suzanne […]

On November 6th, Jessica Aldrich successfully defended her PhD, titled ‘Advancing a Reactive Oxygen Species Scavenging Nanomaterial Platform to Target Oxidative Stress In Osteoarthritis’! This work is the culmination of the last five and a half years of Jessica’s work in both the Sharma Lab and the Allen Lab. While at the University of Florida, […]

The 2024 Gordon Conference (GRC) on Signal Transduction by Engineered Extracellular Matrices (STEEM), featured themes that included: ECM regulation of cell death mechanisms; co-evolution with cancer and neurodegeneration; the synthesis of living material environments and microphysiological systems; effects of sex and ancestry on cell-ECM signaling; and integration of systems biology, screening, and multi-scale modeling tools […]