Tomas Gonzalez-Fernandez Lab: Advanced Tools for Engineering Smart cells and Materials

Congrats to TGF lab member Jose Gabriel Castro for winning a Poster Presentation Award at the recent 2025 Undergraduate Research Symposium at Lehigh University!

Congrats to Trevor and Gabe for receiving the Lehigh University Student Forum Research Grant, and Ben for his acceptance into the Rossin Research Scholars Program!

Trevor’s grant funding will allow him to examine the biological response of mesenchymal stromal cells to the conformational change of a super swelling biomaterial. Gabe will be seeking to develop a cell-specific non-viral vector for CRISPR delivery.

Through the Rossin Research Scholars Program, Ben is looking to learn more about stem cell biology and CRISPR research. Congrats to Trevor, Gabe and Ben for these accomplishments!

Undergraduate student in the TGF Lab, Layla Puig, has presented her research at the 2024 meeting of the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minoritized Scientists (ABRCMS) held in Pittsburgh.

Layla presented a poster entitled “Achieving Temporal Control over Gene Editing through Biomaterial Guided Gene Delivery”.

Following the TGF Lab tradition we joined the 2024 Lehigh University Turkey Trot!

A lab that runs together, works together!

The TGF Lab had a great time at the 2024 BMES annual meeting!

Several graduate and undergraduate students in the lab (Josh Graham, Chiebuka Okpara, Krishna Jayaram and Jose Gabriel Castro) presented at this conference!

https://engineering.lehigh.edu/news/article/advancing-crispr-lehigh-researchers-develop-predictive-models-gene-editing

Layla was awarded an oral presentation award at the 2024 Lehigh Research Day with her poster entitled “Achieving temporal control over gene editing through biomaterial-guided CRISPR delivery”.
Layla is an undergraduate researcher in the TGF lab supported through the Clare Boothe Luce Undergraduate Research Award.

Josh Graham recently presented his talk entitled “Integrating CRISPR and Machine Learning to Achieve Mature Chondrocyte Genetic Profiles in MSCs” at the TERMIS World Congress 2024 in Seattle.

Krishna Jayaram, an undergraduate researcher in the TGF Lab, hat the chance to present her poster summarizing her research for the past year in our lab at the 2024 Lehigh University Undergraduate Research Symposium.

Congrats to Krishna for her accomplishment and also to Zachary Weiser and PhD student Chiebuka Okpara for their contributions to Krishna’s project!

 

Congrats to Layla for being awarded with the Clare Boothe Luce Undergraduate Research Fellowship!

Layla will explore the integration of CRISPR into 3D printed scaffolds for tissue repair.