William J Polacheck - PI
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Member, Cell Biology and Physiology Curriculum, UNC Medicine
Member, McAllister Heart Institute, UNC Medicine
Bill was born in the Harrisburg area of Pennsylvania and attended Cornell University to study Biological and Environmental Engineering. He worked in various labs in the Mechanical Engineering Department and spent his summers in a Tumor Immunology Lab at Penn State Medical School before joining Brian Kirby's Micro-/Nanofluidics Lab to develop biomaterials for orthopedic tissue engineering. He then moved to Cambridge, MA to study Mechanical Engineering at M.I.T. as an NSF graduate research fellow. He earned his Ph.D. in the Mechanobiology Laboratory under the guidance of Roger D. Kamm, developing microfluidic platforms for the tumor microenvironment. He then moved across the river to Boston to work as an NIH postdoctoral fellow at The Wyss Institute at Harvard University and at The Biological Design Center at Boston University. He worked under the guidance of Chistopher S. Chen in the Tissue Microfabrication Laboratory where he developed biomimetic models for the blood vasculature to study endothelial cell mechanotransduction.
In 2018, Bill moved to Chapel Hill begin his appointment in the UNC/NC State Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Honors & Awards:
2008-2011 - National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
2015-2016 - NIBIB T32 Fellowship, Organ Design and Engineering
2016-2018 - Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award
2018 - Wallace H. Coulter Translational Partnership Award for translational research
2021 - American Heart Association Career Development Award
2021-2026 - NIGMS Maximizing Investigator's Research Award
Office
9206B Mary Ellen Jones
116 Manning Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-7575
Wen Yih Aw, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow in BME, UNC
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B.S., Molecular Biosciences, University of Kansas, 2011
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Ph.D., Molecular Biology, Princeton University, 2018
Wen recently completed a Postdoc at the UNC Catalyst for Rare Disease. She is our lab's molecular biology expert and is working to understand the role of Notch receptor signaling in mechanotransduction.
Gihun Lee, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow in BME, NC State
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B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Chung-Ang University, 2012
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M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Chung-Ang University, 2014
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Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Chung-Ang University, 2019
Gihun recently completed his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Chung-Ang University in Seoul, Republic of Korea. He is the lab's resident maker and fabrication expert, working to develop new models for the lymphatic system.
Stephanie A Huang
PhD Candidate in BME, UNC
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B.S., Polymer Science and Engineering, Case Western Reserve, 2018
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NIH NHLBI T32 Training Fellow, Integrative Vascular Biology, 2020-Present
Stephanie Huang graduated with a BS in Polymer Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in 2018 where she performed research on artificial platelets to enhance hemostasis. She is currently studying how shear stresses and interstitial flow drive vasculogenesis. Outside of the lab, Stephanie enjoys playing video games, crafting, and baking.
Elizabeth Snyder-Mounts
PhD Candidate in BME, UNC
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B.S.E., Biomedical Engineering, Duke University, 2019
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NIH NHLBI T32 Training Fellow, Integrative Vascular Biology, 2020-Present
Elizabeth graduated in 2019 with a BSE in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University, where her research focused on investigating the use of induced pluripotent stem cells for disease modeling using tissue engineered blood vessels. Her current research focuses on fabricating and optimizing microfluidic devices for vascular disease modeling in conjunction with the Rare Disease Catalyst. Outside of lab, Elizabeth enjoys being active, playing board games, and watching college basketball with friends.
Anne Hope Cooper
2020-2021 UNC BME Abrams Scholar
Anne Hope is an undergraduate student in the UNC-CH/NCSU joint department of biomedical engineering. She is currently working on quantifying experiments with in vitro vascular networks.
Sara Meehan
UNC BME Undergraduate
Sara is an undergraduate student applying into the UNC-CH/NCSU Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering from the Biology Department. She is currently working on microfluidic approaches to interrogate pressure-strain relationships in the microvasculature. Her work will provide valuable insight into how fluid pressures regulate vascular endothelial biology.
Emily Warren
2020-2021 UNC BME Abrams Scholar
Emily is an undergraduate in the UNC-CH/NCSU joint department of biomedical engineering. Her current research focuses on characterizing the extracellular matrix structure in Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome using computational image analysis. Her work seeks to understand how differences in extracellular matrix structure can be related to the mechanical failure observed in vEDS patients.
Harry Wang
UNC BME Undergraduate
Harry Wang is an international student of UNC-CH class 2023, double majored in Biomedical Engineering and Computer Science (and minored in math). He is currently working on the image processing of the microvascular network to better characterize different networks.