Principal Investigator
 | Hossein Tavana, Ph.D., P.Eng. |
Graduate Students
 | Astha Lamichhane PhD student Email: al229@uakron.edu Astha received her BS in Biomedical Engineering from Nepal. She joined the lab in September 2018. Astha’s project is to study on cancer stem cells in engineered tumor models. |
 | Jacob Heiss PhD student Email: jsh98@uakron.edu Jacob received his BS in Biomedical Engineering from University of Akron. He joined the lab in September 2019. Jacob’s project is to develop 3D human triple negative breast cancer models and study tumor-stomal signaling as a therapeutic target. |
 | Pouria Rafsanjani Nejad PhD student Email: pr86@uakron.edu Pouria received his BS and MS in Biomedical Engineering from Amirkabir University in Iran. He joined the lab in September 2019. Pouria’s project is to develop organic models to study toxicities of cancer therapeutics in normal tissues. |
 | Hannah Combs PhD student Email: hmm68@uakron.edu Hannah received her BS and MS in Biomedical Engineering in 2020 and 2022 from the University of Akron. She joined the lab in August 2020. Hannah’s project is to utilize a bioengineered 3D lung model to study liquid surfactant delivery. |
 | Prasiddha Guragain PhD student Email: pg81@uakron.edu Prasiddha received his BS from the College of Biomedical Engineering and Applied Sciences in Nepal. He joined the lab in August 2021. Prasiddha's project is engineering a 3D model of bone metastasis of breast cancer. |
 | Anju Rana Magar PhD student Email: ar391@uakron.edu Anju received her BS in Biomedical Engineering in Nepal. She joined the lab in September 2022. Anju's project is to develop a 3D model that mimics the varying stiffness of breast tumors while maintaining the ECM composition constant and elucidate how integrated effects of ECM stiffness and specific biochemical signals in the TME promote epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and local invasion of cancer cells. |
 | Davonn Henderson PhD student Email: dlh217@uakron.edu Davonn received her BS in Biology from Ohio State University in 2010, BS in Nursing from Kent State University in 2013. She joined the lab in September 2022. Davonn's project is researching aerosolized therapeutic drug delivery using the neonate lung model. |
Undergraduate Students
| Nina Treacher | Lillian Beaty |
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Alumni
| Ehsan Atefi PhD, 2015 | David Petrak MASc, 2013 | Golnaz Jalalahmadi MASc, 2013 |
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| Stephanie L. Ham PhD, 2017 | Antonio Copploe MS, 2017 | Ramila Joshi PhD, 2018 |
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| Pradip Shahi Thakuri PhD, 2019 | Sunil Singh PhD, 2021 | |
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