Graduate students Caleb, Savieay, Kinsley, and Naciye (here with their muppet PI since Jenny couldn't attend) headed up to the Taubman Museum in Roanoke today to participate in STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Art and Math) day with students from all over the area. They prepared many demonstrations. Savieay and Caleb helped the kids create microfluidics out of crayons: Kinsley and Naciye worked with students to create handpainted neurons and solve puzzles: Everyone had a great time! And we're excited to break out these activities and more when we participate in the Virginia Tech Science Festival in October!
In our first social outing, selected by Caleb Stine, the Munson Lab traversed the brand new VT Ropes Course. Working together we climbed, scooted, and balanced along the course. Here we're working together to cross on a couple thin wires while all holding onto each other. It was a great experience and we learned a lot about each other. Naciye was the most daring of the bunch, sprinting and flying across the highest obstacles of the structure and Caleb displayed is strong support skills as he motivated and encouraged everyone to keep going and work together. After about an hour, we made our way to the very top of the structure on something called the Giant's ladder (which Jenny was too scared
In the past month, two of our articles have made the cover of their respective journals: 1. "Functional aspects of meningeal lymphatics" Nature 2. "MRI Analysis to map interstitial flow in the brain tumor microenvironment" APL Bioengineering You can link to the articles on our publications page! Exciting times here in the lab. What a crazy summer!
The Munson Lab welcomes three new PhD students this fall: Kinsley Tate, MS joins us from East Carolina University where she completed her Master's working on mini-brains. She'll be working closely with Postdoc, Chase Cornelison, to examine glial-tumor interactions! Naciye Atay joins us from UNC-Chapel Hill. Naciye will be working closely with graduate student, Caleb Stine, and with Kathy Luker's team at the University of Michigan as she examines the role of CXCR4 and CXCL12 in modulation of flow-mediated invasion. Savieay Esparza will be co-advised by Dr. Munson and Dr. Scott Verbridge (LITE Lab @VT) and will be working on developing new tissue engineered models of the vascular-tumor niche i
