Diversity

FLP Alumni

Dr. Vivian Feig is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. The Feig lab designs mechanically-dynamic materials to make medical technologies less invasive and more widely accessible. Originally trained as a chemical engineer, Dr. Feig obtained her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford with Prof. Zhenan Bao, developing conjugated polymer-based hydrogels. Following her PhD, she trained with Prof. Giovanni Traverso and Prof. Robert Langer at MIT and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Feig’s research has been recognized with awards from the American Chemical Society, the Materials Research Society, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

Regina García-Méndez joined the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Johns Hopkins University as an Assistant Professor in September 2023 after completing her post-doctoral research fellowship at Cornell University. At Cornell, Regina focused on materials and interphase design for highly reversible, long-duration, cost-effective aluminum batteries. In 2020, she earned her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering with Jeff Sakamoto at the University of Michigan. During her Ph.D., her work focused on materials design and processing for energy storage applications.

She specializes in synthesizing and functionalizing inorganic materials in the solid state. Her research leverages various characterization tools to unravel the properties and behavior of materials at multiple scales.

Dr. Eve Mozur is currently an Assistant Professor at Colorado School of Mines. Her research group seeks to link the functionality of energy and magnetic materials to their stimulus- and time-dependent structure. Eve graduated from Reed College in Portland, OR with a B.A. in Chemistry. She completed her PhD in Chemistry in the lab of Prof. Jamie Neilson at Colorado State University, investigating the role of organic cation dynamics in hybrid perovskites for photovoltaics. After earning her PhD, Eve worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of California Santa Barbara under Prof. Ram Seshadri. There, she studied the effect of composition on the formation of large magnetic bodies.

Dr. Monica Ohnsorg is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the University of Colorado Boulder’s Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering advised by Prof. Kristi Anseth. Her research focuses on tailoring the nonlinear elastic properties of bottlebrush polymer hydrogels to engineer synthetic extracellular microenvironments. In 2021, Dr. Ohnsorg earned her Ph.D. from University of Minnesota co-advised by Profs. Theresa Reineke and Frank Bates. Her doctoral work investigated bottlebrush polymer excipients to sequester small-molecule therapeutics for oral drug delivery. Applying for faculty positions Fall 2024, Dr. Ohnsorg is poised to establish an interdisciplinary research lab exploring the intersections of polymer chemistry, biomaterials, and extracellular matrix engineering.

Find Dr. Ohnsorg on Twitter/X: @Monica_Ohnsorg

Dr. Antonio Tavera-Vazquez currently conducts postdoctoral research at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. He focuses on experimental active matter within liquid crystalline materials, such as light-activated colloids in thermotropic liquid crystals. He was also a visiting postdoctoral researcher at the ESPCI-PSL Paris, where he studied active nematic microtubules of polymerized proteins driven by molecular motors fueled with ATP. Before joining UChicago, Dr. Tavera-Vazquez earned a Ph.D. in Physics from the National University of Mexico, with preparation in Physical Chemistry and Soft Matter. Over there, mainly performing dynamic and static light scattering experiments, he studied actuating and functional anisotropic materials embedded in complex fluids, such as wormlike micelles and carbon nanotubes, displaying different rheological responses tuned by light, polymer chain length, and pH.

Dr. Tavera-Vazquez enjoys participating in educational and outreach programs to benefit the community.  He has joined science fairs, scientific clubs, and diverse workshops in Mexico and the US.

Find him on Twitter/X: @taveramaster

Christina Tringides is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Professor Janos Vörös (ETH Zürich, D-ITET), and is starting her own laboratory as a tenure-track assistant professor at Rice University in July 2024, in the Materials Science and Nanoengineering department and a core member of the Neuroengineering Initiative. She earned her B.S. degrees in physics and in materials science and engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2015, and spent one year as a Fulbright Scholar at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne before starting her PhD in 2016. Her PhD work was done in the laboratory of Professor David Mooney (Harvard, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences), and her degree came from Harvard Biophysics and the Medical Engineering Medical Physics program between Harvard and MIT, in May 2022. Her research focuses on developing new materials and neurotechnologies to interface with the nervous system, from the cell to organ levels, and for both in vivo and in vitro applications.

Find Christina on Twitter/X @cm_tringides