Meet the Team

Hello there! We from Group 22 have reached the peak of happiness because you've made your way to get to meet us and learn more about the story of us and the individual superstars that make up our team.

For starters, all of us are fourth-year students at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) majoring in bioengineering with a focus on biotechnology. Long story short, during these past four years we have studied through a plethora of engineering classes and know all too well the stress of trying to learn under the pandemic-induced virtual situation. Even under these exiled-from-campus conditions, we bonded together during Spring Quarter 2020 and agreed to work together on an interesting project about creating a replacement lymph node to rescue patient response to immunotherapy treatments under the guidance of our mentor Dr. Robert Saddawi-Konefka. Our planning for this project really ramped up in August when we finished a literature review and met with our other co-mentor Dr. Karen Christman, which helped us bring our project from a blank space to reality with concrete ideas and plans. Over the course of the 2020-2021 school year, with the hard work of Aoife and Elaine in the lab and Kevin and Sydney in a virtual format, we were able to change and evolve our project to a 3-dimensional analysis of the lymphatic network of the mouse given head and neck cancer conditions. While we were unable to test our final decellularized lymph node in vivo, our project set up solid foundations for a potential treatment for head and neck cancer that can synthesize standard-of-care treatments with novel immunotherapies, and it gave us epiphanies on clues for analyzing the effects of head and neck cancer as well as lmyphatic ablation on the overarching lymphatic network. With these conclusions discussed during Bioengineering Day 2021, we brought our project to an enchanted closure by earning the Best Project Award, culminating in the best day of our group project experience.

You can find an album cover-esque photo of the four of us above because we've become very close friends throughout the course of this project as the group that "dances like we're 22" as a reference to the Taylor Swift song. Speaking of which, for honorary brownie points: how many Taylor Swift references did you catch in this intro? You can find up to 15 if you look carefully enough!

Find more information about us individually in the modules below!

Aoife O'Farrell

Hello! My name is Aoife (pronounced EE-FA, it's Irish!), and I am a graduating senior at UCSD studying bioengineering: biotechnology and global health. I'm so incredibly proud to be part of this amazing team, and for all the work we accomplished this year! I've always been interested in translational medicine and work that can benefit patients. As such, this project provided the perfect opportunity to combine my previous experience in the field of cancer, my passion for patient-driven innovation, and my engineering coursework towards a singular aim. When I'm not in the lab, I enjoy hiking, traveling (see photo from when I studied abroad in 2019!), and baking an obscene amount of cookies :D Next fall I'll be moving to Philadelphia to pursue a PhD in bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. My email address is ofarrell.aoife.e@gmail.com, please feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

Elaine Tran

Hi hi! I’m Elaine, a graduating Bioengineering: Biotechnology student minoring in Health Care: Social Issues. I’ve been working in the Christman Lab for the past few years, helping to evaluate the efficacy of our minimally invasive tissue engineering therapies. This project was an amazing experience for me because I got to apply my passion for tissue engineering to a totally new field of study, cancer! It took some time, but I’ve learned a lot and had the wonderful opportunity to work with my friends on this team for the past year. When I’m not in the lab, I’m a huge foodie and tea enthusiast! I also enjoy crafting and I’m looking forward to making different trinkets once I have more time. I’m currently looking for jobs and hoping to broaden my experience in Bioengineering, either in industry or in other academic labs! Feel free to reach out to me at elaine.han.tran@gmail.com if you have any questions :)

Shuo-Ren (Kevin) Hsu

Henlo friends! My name is Kevin Hsu and I am a graduating Bioengineering: Biotechnology student from Revelle College. My previous research experience has involved cardiac and pancreatic tissue engineering with the Christman Lab and molecular biology regarding ALS research with the Cleveland Lab. While I am currently not in a research lab, I dedicated most of my senior year to helping my team learn about the skills related to tissue engineering, and I also played a major role in assisting our virtual image analysis portion of our project using IMARIS with remote access. In my spare time, I enjoy gaming, spending time with friends, getting food, drinking black tea, working out, cooking, and browsing through YouTube! I'm currently looking for a job in industry once I graduate, so feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

Sydney Woo

Hi everyone! Thank you so much for checking out our project! I originally had only algae biomolecular experience from working with the Mayfield Lab on campus, but I've definitely learned so much from my team members and my mentors. Not only did we have to perform a continuous literature review of current tissue engineering techniques, but we also learned how to persevere through the many obstacles that research threw at us. When taking a break from academia, I love going on walks to the park with my friends, watching movies and surfing YouTube, and I've recently picked up water coloring! I'm from the Bay Area so I make sure to call my family once a week, but I'm also grateful to have a home here in SD amongst my three lovely apartment mates/friends. As for the future, I've decided to look for job opportunities to learn more about how biotechnology is being used in the world beyond academia!

Dr. Robert Saddawi-Konefka

Dr. Saddawi-Konefka is an OHNS resident physician and postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego. Currently, he is completing an F32-supported fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Silvio Gutkind at the Moores Cancer Center. Dr. Saddawi-Konefka's research interests include cancer-immune dynamics and the design of translatable, precision immune-oncology therapies for head and neck cancer.

Page Leader: Shuo-Ren (Kevin) Hsu

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