Dr. Sharma was recently named a recipient of the NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award, one of the NSF’s most prestigious awards for junior faculty. According to Dawn Tilbury, the head of the NSF’s Engineering directorate, “With NSF CAREER awards, junior STEM faculty have the opportunity to tackle important and unique research challenges and to make our country’s future healthier, safer and more prosperous.” The research challenge that Dr. Sharma proposed to address is tumor immune evasion of natural killer cells. Toward this important clinical problem, Dr. Sharma will use advanced hydrogel materials developed in her lab to study the biophysical and biochemical cues in the tumor microenvironment. To read the full story, click here.
