Newsletter
July 2024
New members: The Jiang lab welcomes Dr. Fang Tang, Nicola Habash and Ana Martins! Dr. Tang received her PhD in Organic Chemistry from Beijing Normal University and joins our lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Nicola is a medical student from Thomas Jefferson University and a recipient of the William H. Pearce, MD, Vascular Surgery Student Research Award. Ana is a student of the Master of Biotechnology Program (MBP). We also welcome our summer undergraduate students: Elizabeth, Emily, Evi, Jessica, and Chibueze.
Alumni: We say goodbye to Calvin, Nidhi and Caitlyn around the same time. Calvin is returning to his clinical training as a vascular fellow. Nidhi is returning to finish her last year of medical school. Caitlyn will move on as a PhD student at UCSF!
March 2024
The Jiang lab welcomes Aurea del Carmen, as a research technologist in our lab. Aurea received her Bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from Northwestern University. She was also on the women’s soccer team for Northwestern from 2019-2023.
February 2024
The PhD recruitment season has begun! Consider joining our lab from the Biomedical Engineering Program, the Driskill Graduate Program in Life Sciences, and the Medical Scientist Training Program.
January 2024
The Jiang lab celebrates the beginning of 2024 by ice skating at the Robert Crown Community Center in Evanston!
December 2023
Congratulations to Taylor Brown for receiving a 2-year predoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association! Taylor’s project will study effects of sympathetic nerve signaling on vascular smooth muscle cell phenotype during vascular graft remodeling.
November 2023
The Jiang social events in November include a tour of the Evanston campus and the Hot Chocolate Run. Taylor ran a 5k race and Bin ran a 10k race.
October 2023
The Jiang lab welcomes Dr. Brandon Applewhite, Ph.D., as a postdoctoral fellow in our lab. Brandon received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Miami. His prior research focused on biomaterials and vascular device development for vascular surgery applications.
September 2023
Award: We received a NIH High Priority, Short-Term Project Award (R56) from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute on a project tilted “Targeted Mitochondrial Delivery Systems for Vascular Interventions” (R56HL169891). The goal is to engineer targeted mitochondrial delivery systems (MDS) with specificity, efficiency, and functional preservation, and validate the MDS in multiple cell types in the blood vessels.
August 2023
Congratulations to Nikita John, second year Biomedical Engineering PhD student, for receiving a predoctoral fellowship from the Regenerative Engineering Training Program (RE-Training). This is a 2-year training program funded by the National Institutes of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (T32-EB031527). Nikita will be mentored by an interdisciplinary team of faculty at Northwestern, including Bin Jiang, Ph.D. (engineering mentor), Karen Ho, M.D. (clinical mentor) and Clara Peek, Ph.D. (life science mentor).
June 2023
Taylor and Bin went to the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, where Taylor presented a poster as part of her training program and Bin served on an NIH study section.
May 2023
Calvin and Bin attended the Vascular Discovery Meeting in Boston, MA, where they presented posters of our research.
December 2022
We celebrated the 2022 holiday season at our last lab meeting of the year with holiday gift exchange and dim sum!
November 2022
Congratulations to Calvin Chao for receiving the 2023 VESS Resident Research Award from the Vascular and Endovascular Surgery Society. His proposal titled “Role of Sympathetic Nervous System Dysfunction in Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Pathogenesis” receives $12,500 in research support for the coming year.
November 2022
Taylor and Bin attended the 2022 American Heart Association Scientific Sessions at the McCormick Place in Chicago, where Taylor presented her poster titled “Development of Femoral Artery Denervation Models for Vascular Remodeling”.
October 2022
We attended the BMES 2022 annual meeting in San Antonio, TX (Oct. 12th to Oct.15th), where Nancy presented her talk titled “Improved Murine Hindlimb Ischemia Model to Assess Vascular Regeneration in Peripheral Artery Disease”, Bin chaired a session titled “Multicellular Engineered Living Systems”, and we hosted a welcome reception for the Center for Advanced Regenerative Engineering. It was great to see a lot of old friends after a long time and make new connections!
September 2022
We hosted our first lab social of the academic year with Chicago-style deep dish pizza. Welcome to Chicago!
August 2022
Our lab is now on Twitter: @JiangLabNU
July 2022
The Jiang lab welcomes two new members: Calvin Chao and Caitlyn Dang. Calvin is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Vascular Surgery Scientist Training Program (T32) at Northwestern University. He received his M.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Worcester. Caitlyn is a research technologist with a B.S. in Biochemistry from Loyola University Chicago.
June 2022
The Jiang lab hosts the 2022 lab summer lunch event at the Hampton Social. We welcome our newest lab members Aidan, Calvin and Caitlyn, send off our research tech Sara who will start her PHD journey next month, and celebrate our accomplishments in the 2021-2022 academic year.
March 2022
We conducted our first lab climate survey to our current and past lab members. The full report is listed here: 2022 Lab Survey Report
December 2021
We celebrated the 2021 holiday season with secret Santa gifts!
October 2021
We joined the Ameer lab for lunch in Evanston to celebrate Dr. Ameer’s recent election to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). Election to the Academy is one of the highest honors in the field of health and medicine and is a recognition of outstanding achievement. We are immensely proud of Dr. Ameer’s landmark scientific contributions and well-deserved recognition.
September 2021
Congratulations to Taylor Brown, second year Biomedical Engineering PhD student, for receiving a predoctoral fellowship from the Regenerative Engineering Training Program (RE-Training). This is a 2-year training program funded by the National Institutes of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (T32-EB031527). Taylor will be mentored by a team of experts at Northwestern, including Bin Jiang, Ph.D. (engineering mentor), Karen Ho, M.D. (life science mentor) and Mark Eskandari, M.D. (clinical mentor).
July 2021
Rayyan defends her Master’s thesis titled “Modeling Diabetic Endothelial Dysfunction with Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells”. Congratulations to Rayyan!
November 2020
We are officially open for business! While we are still waiting for a number of instruments and supplies to be delivered to us, we are all set for basic lab functions, including histology, cell culture and other bench work.
October 2020
Sara Alharbi joins our team on Oct. 26th as our Research Technologist. Sara received her Master’s Degree in Biological Sciences from Depaul University in 2019. We look forward to having her as our latest lab member.
September 2020
We are moving to the Chicago campus on September 1st, 2020. Our new lab is located at the 11th floor of the Simpson Querrey Biomedical Research Center (SQBRC).
April 2024: Congratulations to our research tech Caitlyn Dang who will start her PhD program at the University of California at San Francisco this fall. We are excited for you!
March 2024: The Jiang lab welcomes Nina Brown, 1st year PhD student from the DGP program for a spring quarter rotation.
February 2024: The Jiang lab welcomes Bianca Navarro, 1st year PhD student from the BME program for a 4-week rotation.
December 2023: The Jiang lab celebrates the holiday season with a potluck and game night party, followed by a white elephant gift exchange.
July 2023: The Jiang lab welcomes two MSTP students for summer rotations: Charles “Charlie” Stark and Julia Shanno, and a visiting medical student for a one-year research fellowship: Nidhi Reddy. We also welcome back Federica Potere, a visiting PhD student from Politecnico di Milano at Milan, Italy for summer research.
March 2023: Bin starts to teach a new class BME495: Regenerative Engineering Lab for the Spring quarter.
January 2023: Bin, Calvin and Taylor participate in the INVOForward Therapeutics: Building A Data Package program in winter 2023.
January 2023: The Jiang lab welcomes two first-year PHD students from the Biomedical Engineering Program for lab rotations: Rebecca “Becca” Riter and Nikita John. Becca received her Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Connecticut. Nikita received her Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Rutgers University.
December 2022: Congratulations to Taylor for leading the work of a review article titled “Prosthetic Vascular Grafts Engineered to Combat Calcification: Progress and Future Directions”, now published in Biotechnology and Bioengineering.
December 2022: The Jiang lab (Bin, Calvin, Taylor and Kyle) attended the 46th Northwestern Vascular Symposium in Chicago, where Bin presented her talk tilted “Vascular Regenerative medicine for Peripheral Artery Disease” and Calvin presented clinical cases.
September 2022: The Jiang lab welcomes two first-year PHD students from the Driskill Graduate Program in Life Sciences for lab rotations: Natalia Matiuto and Madeline Melzer. Natalia received her Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the National University “Gubkin U” in Moscow, Russia. Madeline received her Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
September 2022: We welcome Federica Potere as the latest member to our lab. Federica is a visiting PhD student from Politecnico di Milano at Milan, Italy. She will spend the next 6 months conducting vascular bioengineering research in our lab.
August 2022: We welcome Kyle Prochno as the latest member to our lab. Kyle is a medical student from the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University. He is a recipient of the William H. Pearce, MD, Vascular Surgery Student Research Award, which provides an 11-month fellowship for research in our lab.
June 2022: Congratulations to our research administrator Lynnette Dangerfield for winning a 2022 Chicagoland Admin Award!
June 2022: Congratulations to Taylor Brown, who has successfully passed her PHD qualifying exam to officially become a PHD candidate!
June 2022: The Jiang lab attends the Department of Surgery William H. Pearce, MD Research Symposium on 6/10: Taylor and Sara present posters on their research projects; Taylor wins Research with Distinction in the student competition; Bin receives a research mentor award. Congrats to all!
June 2022: Bin attends the Big 10 Women’s Workshop (BTWW) sponsored by the National Science Foundation from 6/6 to 6/8.
April 2022: Congratulations to Aidan Smires, who has been awarded a BME Summer Undergraduate Research Award in the amount of $4000. Aidan will start his research in the lab this summer!
April 2022: Congratulations to Sara Alharbi, who has been accepted to a PhD program at the University of Cincinnati and will start her study in the fall of 2022. Sara will finish her work in the lab till June 2022 and we are actively looking for a research technologist as her replacement.
March 2022: Congratulations to Danyi Wang, who has been selected as a post-bac research fellow at the Vaccine Research Center in the NIH. She will graduate with her Bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and start the 2-year fellowship this summer.
March 2022: We hold our spring lab social for ice skating at the Robert Crown Community Center in Evanston.
February 2022: We hold our second virtual game night over Zoom. We hope to have our next lab social in person.
January 2022: Taylor presents her work at the Department of Surgery research conference.
November 2021: We celebrate Thanksgiving with a very traditional Thanksgiving dinner including a 17-pound turkey at Bin’s place for our international students and scholars!
October 2021: We welcome Alexander Shakibai as the newest member of our team! Alex is a Master’s student in Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern University.
September 2021: We welcome two new members to our lab: Shizheng Li will work towards his Master’s Degree in Biomedical Engineering in our lab; Mary Kelly will start a 10-week rotation for her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering.
August 2021: We hold our farewell party for Rayyan at Bin’s place.
July 2021: Rayyan graduates with her Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering. Congratulations!
July 2021: We hold our first hybrid lab meeting in our beautiful conference room and our first in-person lab social at the Ohio Street Beach, on the same day!
June 2021: We are fully reopen for in-person research and we welcome our summer students!
May 2021: Robin receives the 2021 Summer Internship Grant Program (SIGP) Award to start her research project this summer!
May 2021: Ria receives the 2021 McCormick Summer Research Fellowship to start her research project this summer!
April 2021: Many of our lab members are now vaccinated against COVID-19!
March 2021: We welcome two new lab members, Beatrix Kovacs (postdoctoral fellow, Ph.D. in Neuroscience), and Robin Kim (undergraduate student, class of 2024)!
March 2021: Rayyan presents her work at the Department of Surgery research conference.
February 2021: We hold our first virtual lab game night on Sat. 2/27. More events will take place in the future, hopefully in person!
January 2021: We welcome two new lab members, Guillermo Tafur (undergraduate student, class of 2023) and Ria Patel (undergraduate student, class of 2023)!
December 2020: Danyi receives an academic year research grant (AYURG) of $1000 to start her undergraduate research project in our lab in 2021!
November 2020: Bin presents her work at American Heart Association Scientific Sessions.
November 2020: We starts experiments in our new lab.
October 2020: Rayyan and Taylor applies for NSF GRFP. Good luck!
October 2020: Sara Alharbi joins our lab as a research technologist.
October 2020: Rayyan presents her work at 2020 BMES Annual Meeting.
September 2020: We move in to our new lab space at SQBRC 11-400.
June 2020: We return to on campus research with social distancing and other precautions.
April 2020: Bin accepts the offer for a joint tenure-track Assistant Professor position with Vascular Surgery and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern, starting in the fall quarter.
March 2020: We are working from home during the state-wide lockdown amid the pandemic.
March 2020: Welcome Kat and Danyi for joining our team!
March 2020: Jimmy accepts the offer for a postdoctoral staff scientist position at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, starting June 2020.
January 2020: Welcome Jason for joining our team!
October 2019: Welcome Rayyan and Isabelle for joining on team!
September 2019: Welcome Jimmy for joining our team!