July 19, 2021
Congratulations and farewell to Dr. Nora Hlavac and Bryan Ibarra. Nora completed 2.5 years of a postdoc position with us and Bryan successfully defended his MS degree in BME. We celebrated and had a traditional Schmidt Lab “roast” at Chuy’s, the first in-person celebration in a long time!
Nora will be going to work for the Charleston County School District in South Carolina. She will be teaching high school engineering courses through a national program called Project Lead the Way (PLTW). PLTW is designed as a hands-on curriculum that prepares students for future education and careers, with particular emphasis on sciences. Nora will be teaching courses on principles of engineering and engineering design. She is excited about the opportunity to be in a dynamic teaching environment where she will have the opportunity to motivate young students with real-life applications of their studies.
Bryan will be putting his biomaterials skills to good use as an Applications Scientist, where he will be primarily employed by EarlyCharm Ventures in Baltimore (a venture studio that co-founds early-stage intellectual property intensive companies out of universities and federal labs) to work for their startup company Ortuvo (founded in late 2020) to develop and commercialize a cost-effective screen printer for tissue fabrication that was patented with Bryan named as a co-inventor. Dr. Erin Lavik – who mentored Bryan in Summer 2017 as part of an REU – is one of the co-founding researchers and co-inventors on the technology.
Congrats to Nora & Bryan on their successes in our lab & good luck on their next adventures!
