Laurel Hind recognized as Biomedical Engineering Society "Rising Star"
Laurel Hind, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering, has been recognized with the Rising Star Award from the听Biomedical Engineering Society - Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering Special Interest Group.听
CMBE鈥檚 Rising Star awards are presented annually to a distinguished group of exceptional junior principal investigators each year. In recognition of her accomplishments, Hind was invited to present her research findings in January at the 2025 BMES-CMBE conference in Carlsbad, California. 听
"I am very excited to accept this award," Hind said. "It highlights the innovative research the students in my laboratory are conducting to better understand the fundamental mechanisms of immune cell signaling and their potential impacts on human health."
Hind鈥檚 work focuses on using engineering principles to better understand the immune response to diseases. Her lab studies how inflammation, cell-cell interactions and the surrounding tissues influence the immune response, with the long-term goal of finding new drug targets to help treat diseases.
For five years Hind's laboratory has been investigating the fundamental mechanisms that regulate the innate immune response to inflammation, with a focus on bacterial infections. The research aims to understand how cells integrate the myriads of signals in an inflammatory environment into an efficient and effective response. During an innate immune response, innate immune cells receive signals from pathogens, blood vessels and tissue cells and react within minutes to protect against infection.听
"This award honors our work investigating how this response fails following sepsis, leading to an increased risk of infection," she said. "This could have profound applications for the way in which we treat patients who recover from sepsis.鈥