News

Ford lab second-year graduate student Sanha Kim received the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program award for 2022. Sanha is one of eight graduate students to receive the award at the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science for 2022.
Sanha's NSF GRFP research proposal is titled "Multi-scale model of P. aeruginosa transport and growth in mucus porous media". Congratulations Sanha!

The Ford lab recently travelled to Washington D.C. to visit the If/Then She/Can exhibit. Each group member identified a women scientist to present about in group meeting (pictured below is graduate student Rhea with her choice). It was awesome to see such diverse representation of women in STEM!

Ford lab undergraduate student Lex Cresci was awarded the Dean's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship and Gregory J. Canty Research Award for Summer 2022. Lex will study how marine conditions control bacteria attachment to microplastics. Congratulations Lex!

Ford lab graduate student Rhea Braun recently volunteered with Wahoo Wizards and KidVention for STEM outreach with K-4th graders. Rhea hosted a booth about sonfication of data, where students created their own drawings to be sonified by the algorithm used in her research. Students drew everything from basic patterns to cats, very cool!

Congratulations to Ford lab graduate student Xueying Zhao on a succesful defense of her Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Chemotaxis in Microorgnism Transport toward Competing Stimuli". Xueying was helpful to train new Ford lab students, established essential microfluidic techniques to the Ford lab, and she will be missed! Xueying started her new job at Becton Dickinson in San Jose, California. Congratulations Dr. Xueying Zhao!

Congratulations to Ford undergraduate student Derek Wu on winning a 3rd place poster award in the Environmental Science and Engineering group at the 2021 AIChE annual meeting! Derek's poster title was "Application of Machine Learning to Identify Key Parameters in Chemotactic Bacterial Distributions Near Oil Ganglia In Porous Media".

Congratulations to Tracy Kuper on a successful Ph.D. proposal defense! The title of Tracy's proposal was "Multi-scale models to predict and control bacterial biofilm formation". The Ford group celebrated over lunch at Tracy's favorite Thai restaurant.

Congratulations to Sanha Kim for passing his Ph.D. qualifying exam! The title of Sanha's exam was "Modeling Pathogen Growth and Transport in Mucus Porous Media". The Ford group celebrated with apple picking at Carter Mountain!

Ford graduate student Tracy Kuper presented a 30 minute talk at the 2021 AIChE annual meeting in the Topical Conference: Microbes at Biomedical Interfaces, Session: Advances in Antimicrobial and Antifouling Materials. The title of her talk was "Chemorepllent-loaded Polymeric Nanocarriers for Biofilm Inhibition". Congratulations Tracy!

Congratulations to graduate student Beibei Gao on a successful PhD proposal defense! Her proposal is titled "Quantifying the role of chemotaxis in transporting bacteria to an oil-phase contaminant in porous media". The Ford group celebrated over hot pot (prepared by Beibei herself) and board games.