Principal Investigator
 | Hossein Tavana, Ph.D., P.Eng. |
Graduate Students
 | 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. |
 | Bidhya Maharjan PhD student Email: bm310@uakron.edu Bidhya received her BS in Biomedical Engineering in Nepal. She joined the lab in August 2026. Her research focuses on engineering a lab-on-a-chip model to investigate the interactions between cancer cells and their microenvironment. |
 | Ayse Baysal PhD student Email: asb176@uakron.edu Ayse is a graduate student pursuing her Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering at The University of Akron. She originally joined the lab in June 2023 as an undergraduate researcher and has been contributing to our research ever since. Her current work focuses on differentiating iPSCs into liver organoids to model and study Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD). |
Undergraduate Students
 | Grace Lutkus Email: gel21@uakron.edu Grace is a Senior student in Biomedical Engineering at University of Akron. Her research topic is "Mechanical Analysis of Alginate-Based Hydrogels". |
 | Kennedy Schlessman Email: kms553@uakron.edu Kennedy is a Senior student in Biomedical Engineering at University of Akron. Her research topic is "Mechanical Analysis of Alginate-Based Hydrogels". |
Alumni
| Ehsan Atefi PhD, 2015 | David Petrak MASc, 2013 | Golnaz Jalalahmadi MASc, 2013 | Jacob Heiss PhD, 2024 |
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| Stephanie L. Ham PhD, 2017 | Antonio Copploe MS, 2017 | Ramila Joshi PhD, 2018 | Pouria Rafsanjani Nejad PhD, 2026 |
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| Pradip Shahi Thakuri PhD, 2019 | Sunil Singh PhD, 2021 | Astha Lamichhane PhD, 2023 | |
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