The University of Florida’s J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering is proud to celebrate four scholars recognized with the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
This year’s recipients include current students Supraja Ganti, Evangeline Meyler and Veronica Ramos Rodriguez, along with alumni awardee Alexander Armstrong.
Supraja Ganti, a first-year Ph.D. student, conducts cancer immunotherapy research under the guidance of Carlos Rinaldi-Ramos, a professor in the J. Crayton Pruitt Family Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering. Her work focuses on leveraging superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles and magnetic particle imaging to track dendritic cell vaccines and better understand their role in tumor growth inhibition. Prior to UF, she earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she completed an honors thesis on the effects of footwear and orthotics on knee osteoarthritis and served as a project manager for Engineers Without Borders.
Evangeline Meyler, a senior undergraduate student, is recognized for her work in musculoskeletal tissue engineering and mechanobiology. In the lab of Brittany Taylor, she investigates how electrospun scaffold microarchitecture influences tendon-derived cell behavior. She has also conducted research at the University of California San Diego, developing engineered biocomposites with enhanced mechanical properties and biodegradability. Meyler will pursue her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering following graduation this summer.
Veronica Ramos Rodriguez, a senior undergraduate student, conducted undergraduate research with Dr. Ruogu Fang in the SMILE Lab where she worked under Skylar Stolte on biomedical imaging AI. She also completed a research internship on shrew musculoskeletal image analysis under Dr. Jonathan Nations at the Florida Museum of Natural History’s Mammal Lab. She will continue her education this fall with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Vanderbilt University after an internship at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory this summer
Alumni recipient Alexander Armstrong conducted undergraduate research at UF Biomedical Engineering under the guidance of Carlos Rinaldi-Ramos. After completing his degree, he spent two years at Massachusetts General Hospital gaining additional research experience before continuing his doctoral studies at Duke University. His work has explored magnetic particle imaging as a non-invasive method to track dendritic cell immunotherapy.
The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship is one of the nation’s most competitive and prestigious awards, supporting outstanding students pursuing research-based graduate degrees in science and engineering.