Dante Medina ’26 presented a poster titled “Using Molecules to Store Energy” at the Southwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Waco, TX. This presentation resulted from research done with Professor of Physics Steve Alexander.

Dominic Mashak ’26 presented a poster titled “Finding Molecules with Large Hyperpolarizabilities” at the Southwest Regional Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Waco, TX. This presentation resulted from research done with Professor of Physics Steve Alexander during the summer of 2024.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby co-authored “Endometrial decidualization status modulates endometrial microvascular complexity and trophoblast outgrowth in gelatin methacryloyl hydrogels” in the journal npj Women’s Health  with Dr. Samantha Zambuto and the Harley Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The work was published open-access and can be downloaded here.

Gabriela Nicole Hislop Gomez ’26, Angel Rodriguez ’24, and Sabrina Woodward ’25 gave platform presentations at the Capitol of Texas Undergraduate Research Conference (CTURC) hosted at UT Austin. Their presentations were the result of work conducted in the bioprinting laboratory of Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby co-authored “Fabrication and Characterization of Quad-Component Bioinspired Hydrogels to Model Elevated Fibrin Levels in Central Nervous Tissue Scaffolds” in the journal Gels with Dr. Dany Munoz-Pinto and his undergraduate laboratory at Trinity University. The work was published open-access and can be downloaded here.

Gabriela Nicole Hislop Gomez ’26, Noor Nazeer ’24, and Angel Rodriguez ’24 presented their research talks at the Texas Academy of Science (TAS) 2024 Annual Meeting hosted at UT Permian Basin in Odessa. Noor and Angel were awarded first place in the chemistry/biochemistry and physics/engineering sections, respectively. Their presentations were the result of work conducted in the bioprinting laboratory of Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby published a review titled “Open-source extrusion 3D bioprinters: Trends and recommendations” in the journal Bioprinting. The publication evaluates the latest syringe extruders that have been designed to extrude bio-inks and offers concrete recommendations to ensure that this technology remains inexpensive and open-source. The process involved building and testing the five most popular designs available in the literature, as seen in Figure 2. The paper can be accessed for free for 50 days here.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby, alongside three outstanding Southwestern alumni and current students (Domenic Cordova ’23, Angel Rodriguez ’24, and Nina Woodward ’24), published an article in HardwareX that demonstrated the development of an open-source bioprinting extruder for Ender-series 3D printers. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ohx.2024.e00510

Five students presented four talks at the Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (TUMC), and four more students attended. The conference was held at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, on October 27-28, 2023. Adrianna Flores-Vivas ’24 presented “Wolf Reintegration in Yellowstone National Park.” Ashley Odell ’24 and Madison Williams ’24 presented “Does Money Really Buy Happiness?”. Blue Goodson ’24 presented “The Mathematical Artistry of Portrait Making.” Johanna Campbell ’24 presented “To the Heart of the Milky Way.” The speakers gave preliminary presentations of their mathematics capstone projects under the supervision of Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton. Associate Professor of Physics Mark Bottorf co-supervised Cambell’s. Shelton also moderated two sessions of student talks. Zoe Kincaid ’24 attended, and first-year S-STEM/EQUIP students Amanda Mejia ’27, Juliana Elizondo ’27, and Alyanna Martinez ’27 also attended. The TUMC is partially supported by the National Science Foundation grant DMS-2226539. The Atkin Junior Professorship in Mathematics for Assistant Professor of Mathematics Noelle Sawyer provided funding.

Noor Nazeer ’24 and Nicole Hislop ’26 presented their work with Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby October 20-21 at the Gulf Coast Undergraduate Research Symposium (GCURS), hosted on Rice University’s campus. Both platform presentations, entitled “Synthesizing Biomaterial Inks to Determine Significant Printing Parameters,” earned complimentary reviews from the graduate student judging panel.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby and four of his FSP research students— Nicole Hislop ’26, Noor Nazeer ’25, Angel Rodriguez ’24, and Nina Woodward ’25 — attended the 2023 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting, held October 11-14 in Seattle, Washington. They presented two posters focused on the development of a novel biomaterial ink for simulating brain parenchyma tissue and the fabrication of a syringe extruder for Ender series 3D printers (the “Enderstruder”). Both posters were well-attended and generated some fascinating discussions.

Kristie Cheng ’23 and Angel Rodriguez ’24 presented their work with Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby on March 3-4 at the 2023 Texas Academy of Sciences (TAS) Annual Meeting hosted at San Angelo State in San Angelo, Texas. Cheng presented a talk entitled “Printability of biomaterial inks to mimic the blood-brain barrier,” and Rodriguez presented a talk entitled “Engineering an ultra-low-cost open-source 3D bioprinter from a Creality Ender 3 FDM 3D Printer”. Both talks were well-attended and received great questions from the audience.

Domenic Cordova ’23 and Nina Woodward ’25 presented their work with Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby on March 4 at the Capitol of Texas Undergraduate Research Conference (CTURC), hosted on UT Austin’s campus. Cordova presented a poster entitled “A Low-Cost Affordable Bioprinter Attachment for an Ender 3 3D Printer,” and Woodward presented a poster entitled “An ImageJ Script to Analyze the Printability of Bioprinted Lattices.” Both earned complimentary reviews from the judging panel.

A wonderful interdisciplinary group from Southwestern participated in the 17th Annual Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (TUMC), held this year at the University of Texas at Austin on October 29. Carson Vogel ’23 presented “Modeling Heat Transfer.” This project is a continuation of the 2021 and 2022 SCOPE projects under the supervision of Professor of Physics Steven Alexander and Associate Professor of Physics Mark Bottorf. This work is part of ongoing efforts for the eventual development of a solar energy storage cell; a problem brought to Southwestern by Coordinator of Science Facilities and Equipment Oscar Lee Fellows. Melanie Richey ’23 presented “Rats on the Run: Modeling of Hippocampal Cell Activity Using Plasticity.” Her project is a continuation of a 2022 Research Experience for Undergraduates at Southern Methodist University under the supervision of Dr. Katie Hedrick in collaboration with Dr. Brad E. Pfeiffer, Department of Neuroscience, UT Southwestern Medical Center. Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr and Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton also attended the conference. Marr chaired a student presentation session. Shelton supervised Vogel’s and Richey’s current work, preliminary results for their mathematics capstone projects. Jillian Reese ’23 and Emma Lewis ’23 joined with their counterparts from the University of North Texas-Denton in research with Shelton and Dr. Joe Iaia, funded through the Council for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics. Other students also attended: Oliver Johnson ’23, Jess Kazmir ’23, Lauren Calzado ’23, Rowan Via ’23, Kathryn Altman ’24, and Aidan Bujanda-Moore ’23. Majors and minors among our student attendees included Mathematics, Computational Mathematics, Physics, Economics, Education, Spanish, and Political Science.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby and two of his FSP research students— Domenic Cordova ’23 and Noah Pyles ’23 — attended the Great Plains Biomaterials Day in Lawrence, Kansas, on November 4, 2022. They presented two rapid-fire talks focused on developing a novel biomaterial ink for the blood-brain barrier and the fabrication of a low-cost Ender-3 bioprinter. Only 5 of the 35 submissions were selected for rapid-fire talks at the conference.

A wonderful interdisciplinary group from Southwestern participated in the 17th Annual Texas Undergraduate Mathematics Conference (TUMC), held this year at the University of Texas at Austin on October 29. Carson Vogel ’23 presented “Modeling Heat Transfer.” This project is a continuation of the 2021 and 2022 SCOPE projects under the supervision of Professor of Physics Steven Alexander and Associate Professor of Physics Mark Bottorf. This work is part of ongoing efforts for the eventual development of a solar energy storage cell; a problem brought to Southwestern by Coordinator of Science Facilities and Equipment Oscar Lee Fellows. Melanie Richey ’23 presented “Rats on the Run: Modeling of Hippocampal Cell Activity Using Plasticity.” Her project is a continuation of a 2022 Research Experience for Undergraduates at Southern Methodist University under the supervision of Dr. Katie Hedrick in collaboration with Dr. Brad E. Pfeiffer, Department of Neuroscience, UT Southwestern Medical Center. Professor of Mathematics Alison Marr and Associate Professor of Mathematics Therese Shelton also attended the conference. Marr chaired a student presentation session. Shelton supervised Vogel’s and Richey’s current work, preliminary results for their mathematics capstone projects. Jillian Reese ’23 and Emma Lewis ’23 joined with their counterparts from the University of North Texas-Denton in research with Shelton and Dr. Joe Iaia, funded through the Council for Undergraduate Research in Mathematics. Other students also attended: Oliver Johnson ’23, Jess Kazmir ’23, Lauren Calzado ’23, Rowan Via ’23, Kathryn Altman ’24, and Aidan Bujanda-Moore ’23. Majors and minors among our student attendees included Mathematics, Computational Mathematics, Physics, Economics, Education, Spanish, and Political Science.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby and four of his FSP research students— Kristie  Cheng ’23, Domenic Cordova ’23, Noah Pyles ’23, and Angel Rodriguez ’24— attended the 2022  Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) Annual Meeting, held October 12-15 in San Antonio, Texas. They presented two posters focused on the development of a novel biomaterial ink for the  blood-brain barrier and the fabrication of a low-cost Ender-3 bioprinter. Both posters were  well-attended by other conference-goers and generated some insightful and helpful discussions.

Jonathan Smart ’23 presented his work with Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby titled “Quantifying the Printability of Biomaterial Inks” on April 23 at the Heart of Texas Undergraduate Research Conference sponsored by Baylor Undergraduate Research in Science & Technology. 

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby gave a poster presentation titled “Phototunable Interpenetrating Polymer Network Hydrogels Stimulate iPSC-EP Vasculogenesis” at the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society 6th World Congress, held virtually November 15–19. 

The lab of Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby was recently featured in a KXAN News story, which was picked up by NBC affiliates in Denver, Colorado, and Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

Business and biology major Andrew Vergote ’21 gave a talk titled “Novel Bioinks: The Gateway to Bioprinting Complex Biological Tissues” at the 2021 BBB South Central Virtual Regional Convention. The talk resulted from research that Vergote completed with Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby in spring 2021. They plan to continue this research as a funded Faculty–Student Project this summer.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby presented “Phototunable Interpenetrating Polymer Network Hydrogels Stimulate iPSC-EP Vasculogenesis” during two Rapid-Fire Sessions, which feature 10-minute talks, at the Rock Stars of Regenerative Engineering Conference and the Annual Meeting of the Society for Biomaterials, which were held virtually April 19–23, 2021.

Physics and mathematics major Gerardo Gonzalez ’22 gave a talk at the 2021 spring meeting of the American Physical Society (Texas Section) titled “Transition Probabilities for a Relativistic One-Electron Atom.” Most of the research presented during this talk resulted from a 2019 SCOPE project that Gonzalez completed with Professor of Physics Steven Alexander. They are currently working on a paper that will describe their calculations.

Assistant Professor of Physics Cody Crosby  had his article “ Phototunable Interpenetrating Polymer Network Hydrogels to Stimulate the Vasculogenesis of Stem Cell–Derived Endothelial Progenitors ” accepted for publication in Acta Biomaterialia  (with an impact factor of 7.242). The preprint can be accessed at bioRxiv .

Double major in German and physics Claire Harding ’20 earned a prestigious Fulbright Award. The nationally competitive Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship will take Harding to Germany, where she will integrate hands-on science learning with lessons in American cultures and the English language. The Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Program places recent college graduates and young professionals as English teaching assistants in secondary schools or universities overseas, improving foreign students’ English language abilities and knowledge of the U.S. while increasing the U.S. student’s own language proficiency and knowledge of the host country. ETAs also pursue individual study/research plans in addition to their teaching responsibilities. Harding’s teacher and mentor, Associate Professor of German Erika Berroth, deeply appreciates Harding’s contributions to the German program as a tutor and member of the leadership team of the German Club.