Day

Reverse Science Fair puts CU Boulder grad students to the test

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 17:00:17 +0000

Reverse Science Fair puts CU Boulder grad students to the test Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/28/2023 - 10:00

Under his NSF Career Award, Assistant Professor Wyatt Shields developed a "reverse science fair" in partnership with CU Science Discovery. Graduate students presented their research, and high school students served as the judges.

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PhD student receives prestigious Acta Student Award

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 18:58:20 +0000

PhD student receives prestigious Acta Student Award Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/13/2023 - 12:58

Susan Glairon

Nicole Day has been selected as the recipient of the 2023 Acta Student Award for her primary contribution to the manuscript titled, “Tissue-adhesive hydrogel for multimodal drug release to immune cells in skin,” published in the September 2022 edition of Acta Biomaterialia.

Day is a rising fifth-year chemical and biological engineering PhD student in CU Boulder’s Shields Lab, where her research focuses on developing particle-based systems to improve the delivery of cancer immunotherapies. The goal of her work is to enhance the effectiveness of current treatments while minimizing adverse side effects by precisely controlling the timing and targeted delivery sites of these therapies.

“This award is an exciting honor because it recognizes more than the impact of my research, but also looks comprehensively at my graduate career,” Day said. “Additionally, the work we are doing is extremely important; it’s exciting to be recognized from among a pool of applicants across many disciplines.”

Day was the sole recipient for Acta Biomaterialia’s prestigious award, which includes a $2,000 prize. The award will be presented to her during the Acta Symposium at the TMS 2024 Annual meeting & Exhibition in Orlando, Florida, in March. She has also been invited to present a poster during the reception.

Assistant Professor Wyatt Shields said the award acknowledges both the excellence of Nicole’s work as well as her article.

“This award builds on Nicole's already impressive list of accomplishments and is a testament to her ingenuity, rigorousness and resolve,” Shields said.

Acta Biomaterialia is an international journal that publishes peer-reviewed original research reports, review papers and communications within the broad field of biomaterials science. The journal emphasizes the relationship between biomaterial structure and function at various length scales.

Nicole Day, a rising fifth-year chemical and biological engineering PhD student in the Shields Lab, concentrates on advancing particle-based systems to enhance the delivery of cancer immunotherapies.

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These tiny, medical robots could one day travel through your body

Anonymous — Thu, 25 May 2023 14:23:26 +0000

These tiny, medical robots could one day travel through your body Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 05/25/2023 - 08:23

A team of CU Boulder engineers has designed a new class of tiny, self-propelled robots that can zip through liquid at incredible speeds—and may one day even deliver prescription drugs to hard-to-reach places inside the human body. ChBE co-authors of the new study include Jin Lee, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher; Assistant Professor Wyatt Shields; Assistant Professor Ankur Gupta; and graduate students Ritu Raj, (Shields and Gupta groups), Cooper Thome (Shields Group) and Nicole Day (Shields Group).

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Shields earns NSF CAREER Award for biomarkers research tied to high school outreach

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Mar 2022 18:18:58 +0000

Shields earns NSF CAREER Award for biomarkers research tied to high school outreach Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 03/01/2022 - 11:18

Jonathan Raab

Assistant Professor C. Wyatt Shields IV

Assistant Professor C. Wyatt Shields IV is the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award for his proposal “Shape-Encoded Electrokinetic Particles for Multiplexed Biosensing.” This project seeks to develop a new method of early identification of disease biomarkers, while also facilitating outreach and education to students at Northglenn High School.

Early disease detection with active, particle-based biosensors

“Our current reliance upon a narrow set of biomarkers can greatly limit the accuracy of initial diagnoses, especially for complex diseases like cancer,” Shields said. “Additionally, with pathologies that progress rapidly — mere hours for some diseases — slow readouts can impair outcomes and increase the cost of medical intervention.”

Shields hopes to address this issue by developing an active, particle-based biosensor wherein particle speed is associated with the amount of biomarkers captured. Particles will be made to have different shapes, each of which will encode for different biomarkers, allowing for the detection of multiple types simultaneously.

“The outcome of this work will be a method to capture and quantify heterogeneous biomarkers such as proteins, nucleic acids and exosomes in a single test,” Shields said.

Science and engineering outreach at Northglenn High School

Shields believes the field of biosensing naturally lends itself to STEM education and outreach efforts. The graduate students in the Shields Lab will put on a “reverse science fair” to share their work with students at Northglenn High School.

“One of the big challenges in science and engineering is being able to communicate your work to diverse audiences,” Shields said. “Our college does a great job training graduate students to communicate their work to audiences with technical backgrounds. What can be paradoxically more challenging is explaining your work to a high schooler who has never taken an engineering course. Part of this CAREER award is designed to provide our students with an opportunity to hone those skills.”

Left: High school students from Northglenn visit the Shields Lab. Photo courtesy Cooper Thome of the Shields Lab.
Right: A magnetic particle separator designed by four students from Northglenn. The device is adjustable to fit a variety of tube types to isolate magnetic particles that are created in the Shields Lab for drug delivery applications. Photo courtesy Nicole Day of the Shields Lab.

Shields and his group want to share their findings beyond the usual channels of research papers and conferences — they want to help educate and inform the public on this important topic. The graduate students will present their research to a panel of Northglenn students who will serve as judges of both the material and the graduate students’ ability to present complex information.

“We talk about feedback mechanisms in our research,” Shields said. “This will give autonomy to students who may not be used to being in that position. They will be able to tell us if they didn’t understand something, or if they found the demonstration to be enlightening and interesting.”

The concept of the reverse science fair will build off the Shields Lab’s previous mentorship program with Northglenn. Three engineering graduate students and four undergraduates have served as mentors to students taking senior design capstone classes.

“The partnership between the Northglenn High School students and the Shields group has been invaluable to our students,” said Bill Thielke, a teacher at Northglenn. “Our senior design capstone classes have been working with the Shields group to design and build prototypes for problems that have been provided by the researchers.”

The Shields Lab researchers introduced advanced concepts and problems to the high school students, “including a demonstration of the delivery of drugs, developing an enclosure for culturing dinoflagellates and the development of a magnetic particle separator,” Thielke said. These authentic engineering challenges have given the students valuable real-world design and application experience.

“The most critical component of this is the mentorship program that the Shields group provides,” Thielke said. “The expertise of these mentors has allowed our students to receive critical feedback as they work through the engineering design process.”

Cooper Thome, a third year PhD candidate in the Shields Lab, is one of the student mentors.

“This project has given students experience in solving real-world problems through a number of approaches,” Thorne said. “The students have been able to use a variety of skills learned in their high school program, like 3D CAD and printing, along with other new skills to come up with a really nice prototype for a large culture tank in which we will be able to easily culture cells that require certain periods of light and dark.”

While Thome appreciates the research opportunities provided by collaborating with the students, inspiring and educating high schoolers is one of the main draws of the collaboration.

"I was lucky enough to have a number of figures like that when I was younger — some of whom are the reason I am in graduate school today — so it’s rewarding to try to do the same for others, even in small ways,” Thome said.

Nicole Day is a third-year bioengineering PhD candidate and mentor.

“It's so much fun to see younger students excited about science and engineering, and I always feel more enthusiastic about my own work after seeing it through the lens of others,” Day said. “The opportunity for students to work on these design projects gives them exposure to having their work valued by people in the field they may be interested in, instead of just having another assignment to turn in to their teacher.”

Day hopes that her participation will help encourage students from underrepresented backgrounds to consider careers in STEM fields.

“Science and engineering research can be hard and discouraging, and it's not easy to pursue if you don't have external support when you are struggling internally,” Day said. “I love seeing the pride students take in their hard work on these projects, and while I've done outreach events for elementary kids in the past, my new goal is to continue engaging with high school students in particular and helping them see their potential in STEM.”

First year graduate student Taylor Ausec, department junior Sarah Adzema, seniors Julia Bendorf and John Fowle, and biomedical engineering sophomore Chris Orear also participate in the Shields Group mentorship program.

Shields is excited about integrating his NSF CAREER research with high school outreach.

“High schoolers are on the cusp of making critical decisions about their future,” Shields said. “If they see some of these emerging technologies and have opportunities to get involved, they may be more likely to consider a career in STEM.”

Six faculty members within the College of Engineering and Applied Science received CAREER Awards from the National Science Foundation in 2022.

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Day awarded Teets Family Endowed Doctoral Fellowship for work in nanotechnology

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 21:23:53 +0000

Day awarded Teets Family Endowed Doctoral Fellowship for work in nanotechnology Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/16/2021 - 14:23

Jonathan Raab

Nicole Day

Nicole Day, a third-year graduate student in the Shields Lab, is the 2021-2022 recipient of the Teets Family Endowed Doctoral Fellowship. The fellowship provides $15,000 a year for two years to support deserving students working in the nanotechnology field.

Day’s research under Assistant Professor C. Wyatt Shields is focused on shape-changing nanoparticles that regulate the delivery of cancer immunotherapies. Such treatments often result in adverse side effects because cancer-fighting drugs are toxic and may end up off-target, further complicating the medical condition of the patient.

“We want to control where immunotherapies go within the body and be able to turn off their delivery in off-target locations or when toxicity arises,” Day said. “The particles we’re designing have a specific geometry that allows them to attach to immune cells, such as macrophages, and exploit cell movement around the body so the drug contained within will be delivered preferentially to tumors.”

Day said these particles are made of a polymer containing special magnetic nanoparticles.

“Exposure to an alternating magnetic field causes these particles to generate heat, melting the polymer into a sphere and allowing the attached immune cells to internalize them and digest the drug,” Day said. “This allows us to selectively ‘turn off’ the drug everywhere except the tumor site, or if a patient experiences a negative reaction to the treatment.”

This technology may one day make immunotherapy treatment safer and more efficient than current methods without the need to design new drugs.

"This award is a testament to Nicole's creativity and hard work,” Shields, her advisor, said. “I am excited to see her project progress as she tackles new challenges in immunotherapy."

Peter Teets, an alumnus of the Applied Mathematics program, established the fellowship in 2002 to support graduate students working in micro- and nanosystems. Teets worked for 37 years in the aerospace industry and ultimately served as the president and chief operating officer of the Lockheed Martin Corporation before going on to serve as the under-secretary of the Air Force. Teets established the fellowship as a memorial to his son, David, who was also an alumnus of the College of Engineering and Applied Science.

“I’d like to thank the Teets family for their generous support of my research, my advisor for his mentorship and guidance, and my lab mates for their encouragement through the ups and downs of research,” Day said. “Additionally, I have had several fantastic undergraduate students working on this project with me.”

Day plans on working in industry after earning her PhD, where she hopes to pursue further research in the field of cancer immunotherapy.

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