MacNaughton Selected as Class of 2024 Student Speaker
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Isabella MacNaughton has been selected as the Class of 2024 student speaker for this year’s Senior Recognition Ceremony, which is being held on May 18 in the Mullins Center. After a call for nominations, MacNaughton was selected by a panel composed of a dean, student, staff, and faculty member.
MacNaughton is a biomedical engineering student on the pre-med track from Hingham, MA. She is a member of the Integrated Concentration in STEM (iCons) program, for which she worked as an administrative and teaching assistant. MacNaughton also worked as a resident assistant (RA) in MacKimmie Hall for two years and co-taught the education class for newly hired RAs. This year, she received the "RA of the Year" Award from the Residence Hall Association She enjoys mentoring younger students from diverse and multi-disciplinary backgrounds.
While pursuing her bachelor’s degree, MacNaughton excelled in nanoparticle research for technological and medical applications. She applied her aptitude for chemistry in the Rotello Laboratory at UMass Amherst by assisting with data collection focused on multi-drug resistant infections. She also completed summer internships in the Shukla Laboratory at Brown University, where she presented her work on adding targeting ligands to nanotherapeutics, and the Prigozhin Laboratory at Harvard University, where she worked on developing nanotechnology for visualizing electron micrographs in color.
For her engineering senior design project, MacNaughton and a group of biomedical engineering seniors partnered with the Director of Emergency Surgical Services at Baystate Health to develop an assistive device for a cricothyrotomy. This ongoing project focuses on supporting under-trained emergency responders in rural communities. After commencement, MacNaughton is eager to contribute to clinical research and pursue medical school.