Laboratory for Biomaterials and Tissue Engineering

• November 2024, Congratulations to Neeti Gandhi for defending her Ph.D. thesis on "Engineering Organoids for Stem Cell Maturation". Neeti will join the Rajagopalan lab as a post-doctoral fellow in December 2025.


• August 2024, Virginia Tech and its collaborators receive an $18M award from the NSF to establish the COMPASS Center. The Center will focus on discovering the rules of life that underlie host-pathogen Interactions. Padma Rajagopalan will co-lead the Replicate thrust and serve on the executive committee of the center.


• August 2024, Padma Rajagopalan, collaborators at Ramona Optics, and Shay Soker at the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine receive a $2.4M SBIR grant from the National Institutes of Health on "A parallelized computational microscope platform for high-throughput live imaging of patient-derived organoids."


• May 2024, Congratulations to Kaleb Chan for completing his undergraduate studies at Virginia Tech. He is starting graduate studies at the University of Virginia in Fall 2024.


• February 2024, Congratulations to Neeti Gandhi for receiving the Outstanding Doctoral Student Award from the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech.


• September 2023, The College of Engineering at Virginia announces a Research Investment Award in "Pandemic Prediction and Prevention". Navid Ghaffarzadegan, T. M. Murali, and Padma Rajagopalan lead this effort..


• August 2023, The Office of the Provost at Virginia Tech announces a Destination Area Initiative award in "Pandemic Prediction and Prevention". Padma Rajagopalan is part of this team.


• May 2023, Congratulations to Neeti Gandhi for being selected to receive the Kirk and Noel Schulz Transformative Graduate Education Award from the Virginia Tech Graduate School.


• April 2023, Congratulations to Kaleb Chan for winning the first prize for his research presentation at the 2023 AICHE Mid-Atlantic Conference.


• March 2023, Congratulations to Neeti Gandhi for being awarded the Outstanding Interdisciplinary Doctoral Student by the VT Graduate School.


• December 2022, Congratulations to Rosalyn Hatlen for defending her doctoral thesis.


• November 2022, Padma Rajagopalan is a co-investigator on a Destination Area 2.0 project on Pandemic Prediction and Prevention awarded by Virginia Tech.


• November 2022, The Rajagopalan group presents five oral talks at the AIChE conference.


• October 2022, Padma Rajagopalan and John Matson (Department of Chemistry) receive a grant from the Macromolecules Innovation Institute Interdisciplinary Collaborative Seed Program on "Molecular Design of Biomaterials for Treating Liver Fibrosis via Regenerative Medicine."


• August 2022, Padma Rajagopalan is a co-investigator on an $1M NSF grant on Community Informed Prediction and Prevention of Pandemics.


• November 2021, Padma Rajagopalan presents a keynote talk on "Transcriptomics of Hepatic Cells in 3D Organoid Systems" at the 6th TERMIS World Congress, 2021.


• November 2021, Rosalyn Hatlen presents her work on "Design and Investigation of an in vitro 3D Glioblastoma Perivascular Niche" at the at the 6th TERMIS World Congress, 2021.


• November 2021, Rosalyn Hatlen presents her work on "Investigating Intercellular Interactions in an in vitro 3D Glioblastoma Perivascular Niche Model" at AIChE 2021.


• June 2020, Identifying Human Interactors of SARS-CoV-2 Proteins and Drug Targets for COVID-19 using Network-Based Label Propagation, a preprint of our collaborative research on repurposing drugs for COVID-19 is now available.


• May 2020, Our group is collaborating on a research project on repurposing existing drugs for COVID19.


• November 2019, Tom Inzana, Padma Rajagopalan and Pablo Sobrado are awarded a grant by USDA-NIFA on "Further Characterization and Resolution of Polymicrobial Biofilms in Bovine Respiratory Disease".


• September 2019, Congratulations to Anjaney Kothari for defending his Ph.D. thesis titled "Investigating the Spatiotemporal Variation in Functional Markers, Gut Metabolites and Ethanol Toxicity in In Vitro Cultures of the Rat Jejunum and Hepatocytes."


• May 2019, Congratulations to Andrew Ford and Sophia Orbach for their publication in Biomaterials titled Fibroblasts Stimulate Macrophage Migration in Interconnected Extracellular Matrices through Tunnel Formation and Fiber Alignment.


• May 2019, Congratulations to Lauren Willis for defending her M.S. thesis on "Investigating Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells for Tissue Engineering and Hepatotoxicity Applications."


• March 2019, Congratulations to Ali Toloczko for organizing and launching the first Mid-Atlantic Undergraduate Research Conference.


• March 2019, Congratulations to Lauren Wills for presenting her work on "Investigating Liver Toxicity with 3D Cultures of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells and Hepatic Non-parenchymal Cells" at the annual Society of Toxicology meeting in Baltimore.


• October 2018, Rajagopalan's group's article "Measuring Cytoplasmic Stiffness of Fibroblasts as a Function of Location and Substrate Rigidity Using Atomic Force Microscopy" selected to be featured in ACS Editors' Choice. This honor is given to only one article from the entire ACS portfolio each day of the year and is based on recommendations by the editors of ACS journals.


• June 2018, Congratulations to Andrew Ford for successfully defending his PhD thesis on "Investigating the Interplay between Inflammation and Matrix Stiffness: Evaluation of Cell Phenotype and Cytoplasmic Stiffness In Vitro". Andrew will be a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Bioengineering at Tufts University.


• February 2018, Congratulations to Sophia Orbach for successfully defending her PhD thesis on "Multi-Cellular Organotypic Liver Models for the Investigation of Chemical Toxicity and Liver Fibrosis". Sophia was co-advised by Marion Ehrich. Sophia is joining the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor as a post-doctoral fellow.


• March 2017, Padma Rajagopalan elected to the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.


• April 2016, Padma Rajagopalan has been appointed the Robert E. Hord, Jr. Professor of Chemical Engineering by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.


• November 2015, Congratulations to Sophia Orbach for being awarded the 2015-2016 Sigma Xi Ph.D. Research Award from the Virginia Tech Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society. This award recognizes outstanding researchers across the university. This year, the society's focus was on the environment. Sophia was nominated for her innovative research on investigating the toxicity of environmental chemicals on liver function.


• October 2015, Congratulations to Sophia Orbach for being selected by the Society of Toxicology to be a "Gold Level Award Recipient" based on her meritorious abstract titled "Hepatotoxicity Testing in Multi-cellular 3D Organotypic Liver Models and Their Potential for High-Throughput Studies" submitted to FutureTox III: Bridges for Translation—Transforming 21st Century Science into Risk Assessment and Regulatory Decision-Making.


• September 2015, Congratulations to Maggie Cassin for successfully defending her M.S. thesis on "The Design of Antimicrobial Detachable Thin Films for the Study of Hepatic Infections".


• September 2015, Congratulations to Lucas Vu for successfully defending his PhD thesis on "Investigation of Hepatocyte Proteomes using Three Dimensional Organotypic Liver Models". Lucas was co-advised by Richard Helm.


• September 2015, NSF's Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems (CBET) Division awards Padma Rajagopalan a three-year grant to study integrated tissue engineering. This project focuses on engineering an integrated GI and liver tissue to obtain information on how these organs work in unison to metabolize chemicals.


• March 2015, Congratulations to Sophia Orbach for receiving the "Outstanding Interdisciplinary Doctoral Student" award from the Virginia Tech Graduate School.


• September 2014, Congratulations to Gaurav Jain for successfully defending his PhD thesis on "Cell migration on opposity rigidity-protein gradients: single cell and co-culture studies". He is currently a post-doctoral research associate at New York University.


• September 2014, Padma Rajagopalan joins the Editorial Board of ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering.


• August 2014, Allison Tegge receives an F32 Fellowship from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to conduct research on the computational systems biology of bioengineered livers and the responses to environmental chemicals.


• July 2014, NSF's Biomaterials Division awards Padma Rajagopalan a three-year grant to study transitional engineered liver tissues.


• May 2014, Padma Rajagopalan receives the Dean's Award for Research Excellence.


• May 2014, Lucas Vu successfully completes his Ph.D. Preliminary Exam.


• September 2013, Padma Rajagopalan and T. M. Murali organize Workshop on Computational Toxicology.


• July 2013, Padma Rajagopalan invited to serve as standing member on National Institutes of Health study section on biomaterials.


• July 2013, Padma Rajagopalan conducts week-long activity on "Cells and Biomaterials" for high school female students.


• May 2013, Gaurav Jain successfully completes his Ph.D. Preliminary Exam.


• April 2013, Congratulations to Brandon Veres for completing his Master's degree and joining Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.


• August 2012, Congratulations to Adam Larkin on successfully defending his PhD thesis on "The design of three dimensional multicellular liver models using detachable, nanoscale polyelectrolyte multilayers". He is joining Celanese Corporation as a Research Engineer.


• July 2012, Padma Rajagopalan conducts week-long activity on "Cells and Biomaterials" for high school female students.


• April 2012, Congratulations to Cigdem Arca on successfully defending her Master's thesis on "The design of polyelectrolyte multilayers using galactosylated chitosan".


• March 2012, Padma Rajagopalan receives the Robert E. Hord Jr. Chemical Engineering Fellowship.


• February 2012, the Virginia Tech Graduate School selects the Computational Tissue Engineering (CTE) interdisciplinary graduate education program (IGEP) for funding. Padma Rajagopalan will direct this IGEP. The goal of the CTE IGEP is to train a new generation of scientists at the nexus of tissue engineering, systems biology, and computational science.


• January 2012, Applications are open for an undergraduate summer research institute on "Computationally-Driven Experimental Biology in Engineered Tissues." The application deadline is February 6, 2012.


• November 2011, Congratulations to Reisha Parham for receiving the 2011-12 American Institute of Chemical Engineers' Minority Scholarship Award.


• November 2011, Congratulation to Karandeep Singh for being accepted into the VT Scieneering Program.


• September 2011, Congratulations to Chris Lasher for successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis on "Discovering contextual connections between biological processes using high-throughput data".


• June 2011, NSF's Advances in Bioinformatics program awards T. M. Murali, Padma Rajagopalan, and Rich Helm a grant to study intercellular signaling in liver mimics.


• May 2011, Padma Rajagopalan, T. M. Murali, and Marion Ehrich receive a STAR grant from the EPA. The project will develop systems biology approaches to unearth toxicity pathways in bioengineered livers.


• March 2011, Adam Larkin successfully defends his Ph.D. preliminary examination.


• September 2010, Yeonhee Kim successfully defends her Ph.D. thesis. She has accepted a post-doctoral position at Harvard Medical School.


• July 2010, ICTAS Center for Systems Biology of Engineered Tissues formed. Padma Rajagopalan is the director of the center. The goal of the center is to develop integrated computational and experimental models of bioengineered tissues by defining a synthesis between systems biology and tissue engineering.
• May 2010, Padma Rajagopalan wins the NSF CAREER award to study the movement or migration of cells under complex environments and in the presence of conflicting stimuli.


• May 2010, Padma Rajagopalan receives the Outstanding Assistant Professor award from the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech.


• September 2009, Padma Rajagopalan and collaborators receive three grants from the NSF and the NIH to investigate 3D liver mimics.