Congrats, graduates!

Pre-commencement festivities

Congrats to Shannon Martello for receiving the M. Douglas LeVan Award for Distinguished Record of Graduate Research from the ChBE Department! Very well deserved!

Congrats to grad student Shannon Martello for receiving the Provost Pathbreaking Discovery Award!

Only a few months late...highlighting our awesome undergrads who presented their work at the Fall 2025 BME and ChBE research symposia!

So happy to share that Dr. Kevin Corn's paper has been published in Cell Reports! www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Excited to highlight our published paper in Proteomics! Grad student Greg Berumen Sanchez showcased the importance of carefully selecting isolation protocols and quantitative methodologies for robust extracellular vesicle proteomics: analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Congratulations to Dr. Greg Berumen Sanchez for successfully defending his PhD! We are proud of his accomplishments!

Happy Halloween!

NEW WRITING: It's aimed at students, with some specific examples for astro/physics folks, but I think other people may find it useful too. 🔭⚛️🧪 "Knowledge is worth your time because of how it shapes your mind. And the authoritarians may take many things from us, but they cannot take our minds."

We are so proud of grad student Shannon Martello who has just been awarded an NIH/NCI F31 fellowship! www.linkedin.com/posts/vinse_...

We just concluded another successful summer of undergraduate research! #SMART #REU #VUSRP

Another momentous occasion for our lab: Congratulations, Dr. Kevin Corn! Kevin successfully defended his impressive thesis today. We are amazed by his persistence, initiative, creativity, and dedication!

Only a little late: grad student Shannon Martello and Dr. Rafat thoroughly enjoyed being immersed in cutting-edge research at the Mammary Gland Biology Gordon Research Conference!

Congrats to Dr. Tian Zhu and Dr. Logan Northcutt! We are proud of your accomplishments!

Long overdue post: Bridget Stevenson (BME) and Kirsten Stubenrauch (ChBE) presented awesome work at their respective undergraduate poster sessions

Happy pi day!

Excited to share our new publication: Body composition as a potential biomarker of recurrence risk in patients with triple-negative breast cancer link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Congratulations to Dr. Tian Zhu for successfully defending her PhD thesis! Her hard work and dedication have paid off, and we are proud of her accomplishments!

Congrats to our newest PhD candidate, McKenzie Mayeaux!

See the profile of grad student Shannon Martello's Theranostics paper! This work was done w/ @cfcaskey.bsky.social 's lab! Ultrasound imaging of breast cancer tumors offers non-invasive monitoring of radiation and immunotherapy response effectiveness engineering.vanderbilt.edu/2025/01/28/u...

Check out the profile of grad student Tian Zhu's Biomaterials paper! In aggressive form of breast cancer, response to therapy may contribute to tumor regrowth, according to Vanderbilt-led study engineering.vanderbilt.edu/2024/11/14/i...

Congrats to all the winners of the 2024 VINSE NanoDay! Poster competition, including Rafat Lab graduate student Shannon Martello who won 1st place! bit.ly/49oTqve

Our first time poster presenters did a wonderful job at the BME and ChBE undergraduate research symposia!

In case some mentors may want to read this. #Nature #PhD #scisky #student #mentor Source: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Among the Cancer-related Starter Packs currently available, I didn’t find one on Tumor Microenvironment. Here, the list of who I found until now… If you want to be added, please reply below! go.bsky.app/CtQMJyW

Happy labsgiving from our lab to yours!

Rotation student Katie Derr and grad student Shannon Martello presented great posters at VINSE NanoDay! Congrats to Shannon for winning the best poster award!!

The Living Materials & Tissue Engineering community continues to grow on Bluesky. So great to see more colleagues over here AND to met new/rising stars in our community. Lets keep growing & sharing our work. And let me know others to add including self-nominations! go.bsky.app/AeG8FWr

Incredibly late post, but we gave a lot of great presentations at conferences this year! First, Dr. Rafat kicked off our tour at #BMES2024

In our first post here, I'm highlighting our recently published paper in Theranostics! Grad student Shannon Martello drove our collaborative paper with the Caskey Lab at VUMC home to show how ultrasound can be used to non-invasively track tumor response to therapy: www.thno.org/v14p6883.htm