Doctoral student Ariel Ash-Shakoor is helping create biomaterials that are more biocompatible, better able to interact with human cells that are damaged or diseased.
As a research assistant in the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute (SBI), the third-year bioengineering graduate was given a strong nod of encouragement to continue through a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP).
NSF GRFP is open to early-stage graduate students and graduating seniors in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines; social science; and behavioral science fields.
Ash-Shakoor engineers biomaterials to understand the effects of chemistry, topography and stiffness on cell behavior with the biomaterial, with specific areas of wound healing and stem cell applications.
“For example, if there is an implant in the body and if it’s rough or positively charged or it’s too soft, then the cells might not like it and not want to stick to it,” Ash-Shakoor says. “So that’s what I want to understand: what’s more important, the fact that it’s too soft? Or is it the fact that it’s too rough, or too smooth, or a positive charge, or a negative charge?”
Ash-Shakoor, whose mentors are Patrick Mather, the Milton and Ann Stevenson Professor of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering and SBI director, and Associate Professor James Henderson, is one of three Syracuse University students in 2014 to win the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.
The other winners are Kelsey John, a Ph.D. student in cultural foundations of education, and David Wilson ’14, a graduate in biomedical engineering who began a Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins University this fall.
$32,000 annual stipend
Fellows receive a three-year annual stipend of $32,000, along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees, and have opportunities for international research and professional development, while conducting their research at any U.S. graduate institution.
Ash-Shakoor applied for the fellowship as her time as a National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) fellow was ending. “It allows you creative freedom, and so that’s why I think it’s appealing to me and many other students,” says Ash-Shakoor, who also appreciated the possibility of international research. “You get to design or pitch your own project or whatever you’ve been working on previously.”
Original Source: http://news.syr.edu/nsf-fellows-given-creative-freedom-to-explore-varied-topics-77378/