BME’s Lauren Brown Wins Prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
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Recently graduated alumna Lauren Brown of the Biomedical Engineering (BME) Department has received a widely coveted National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship, which will soon support her research and studies at the University of Pennsylvania as a bioengineering Ph.D. candidate. The NSF fellowship will provide Brown with a three-year annual stipend of $37,000 along with a $12,000 cost-of-education allowance for tuition and fees (paid to the institution), as well as access to opportunities for professional development available to NSF-supported graduate students. See Six Graduate Students Receive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships.
Brown’s curiosity about biomedical research began as a young child. “I have always loved doctor’s appointments,” she recalls. “Ever since I was little, I have been fascinated by medicine and the human body. When my dad was diagnosed with early onset Parkinson’s Disease, I knew I wanted to pursue a career that went beyond diagnosing and could affect the future of medicine.”
That quest eventually led Brown, who comes from Medford, Massachusetts, to the UMass flagship campus as an undergraduate in the BME department and the Commonwealth Honors College. She says that “I decided to pursue a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering; from there I discovered my passion for research. As my research interests grew, I realized it is no coincidence that I want to advance disease modeling and treatments through cell and tissue engineering.”
As Brown says about her undergraduate research experience at UMass Amherst, “During my freshman year I joined Professor Yubing Sun's Laboratory for Multiscale Bioengineering and Mechanobiology and have conducted research with implications for improving understanding of wound healing, cancer metastasis, and human-brain development and patterning.”
Brown adds that “Joining Professor Sun's lab has undoubtedly been one of the most impactful experiences I have had in my undergraduate career. Participating in on-campus research has strengthened my undergraduate curriculum and prepared me for grad school.”
One indication of Brown’s outstanding research accomplishments was her inclusion among the six talented undergraduates chosen as UMass Amherst “Rising Researchers” in the fall of 2022. The Rising Researchers program recognizes the university’s most gifted undergraduate students who excel in research, challenge their intellect, and exercise exceptional creativity.
Brown has been studying Cell and Tissue Engineering to Advance Medicine. For example, in Sun’s lab Brown worked on a project using rat embryonic fibroblast cells to study their collective migration and rearrangement, developments which play a key role in processes such as wound healing and cancer metastasis.
“My work culminated in a research article published in eLife,” says Brown. “It was inspiring for me to contribute to research and see my name on this published work this early in my academic career.”
Brown’s honors thesis research in Sun’s lab studied the effects of environmental toxins – including di-butyl phthalate, commonly found in paint, shower curtains, and hairspray – on embryonic brain formation by using an in vitro drug screening model developed by one of her mentors, Tianfa Xie, who is a recent graduate from Sun’s lab.
As Brown explains, “The model that I [have been utilizing] for my honors thesis has the potential to serve as a mechanism for investigating human-brain development and patterning. In vitro models that can recreate functional organs and tissues can be more accurate than animal testing.”
As one consequence, according to Brown, “The model could also serve as a high throughput drug-screening platform, which could reduce the need for animal testing…My aim is to further validate the model and investigate the effects of environmental toxins on embryonic brain formation.”
Brown concludes that “Research is always changing, and it’s exciting to be a part of. I enjoy knowing that what I’m doing today could provide not only new insights but also pose new questions to be explored.” Coming up next, she will be investigating many new insights and exploring many probing questions as a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania. (June 2023)