News

2022

September

  • Congratulations to Mark on his 1st place summer seminar!

  • Israt shares her work on new disinfecting materials for water purification at the Pure Madi event!

  • Keelin Reily, a 2nd year Biomedical Engineering undergraduate, and Mackenzie Klepsig, a second year chemical engineering undergraduate, join the lab!

August

  • Mark and Zixian become our lab's newest PhD candidates!! Congratulations on your stellar work and presentations, and thanks for your absolutely phenomenal contributions to our lab's research and culture!

  • Mara and Rachel present their work, and Mara presides for a session at the ACS meeting in Chicago

  • Rachel gives a Center for Vascular and Heart Research Center seminar at Virginia Tech Carilion

July

  • Mark, Zixian, and Rachel attend and present posters the Drug Carriers in Biology and Medicine Gordon Research Conference! Mark and Zixian attended the preceding GRS as well, and we had a great time making friends and learning from this awesome community!

  • Our lab receives an NIH Maximizing Investigator Research Award (MIRA)! We are so excited and grateful for the support to continue our efforts to use polymers to maximize the function of therapeutic peptides. Read more about this work and award here.

June

  • Mara and Rachel attend the Tosoh Polymer Conference in Hollywood, CA -congratulations to Mara on her 1st place poster award!

May

April

  • Clare and Liza, joint undergraduate students in the Letteri and Lampe labs, present a poster at the Society for Biomaterials Meeting in Baltimore, MD!

  • Clare and Liza present their work at the SEAS Engineering Open House, and Taylor and Rachel tell perspective UVa undergraduates about all the possibilities Chemical Engineering has to offer!

  • Vince starts his internship at Tempo Therapeutics in San Diego funded by the NIH Biotechnology Training Program at UVa.

  • Our lab receives an NSF CAREER award for developing new ways to control mechanics and lifetime in dynamic hydrogel biomaterials! We're so excited to start this project and to work with Marco Giles and his students at Prairie View A&M University to structure the start of undergraduate research experiences while studying how polymer architecture impacts these dynamic hydrogel properties! Read more here.

  • Clare, Liza, Justin, and Drew (joint undergraduate students in the Letteri and Lampe labs) present a poster at UVA's Undergraduate Research Symposium!

  • Israt presents her work on stereochemistry-driven gelation at the University of Virginia Engineering Research symposium (UVERS).

  • Congratulations to Mara on winning an PMSE Best Poster Award at the ACS Meeting in San Diego for her work on poly(amino ester)s! Read more here.

March

February

2021

December

  • Congratulations to Vince, Israt, and Emma on publishing their review article on peptide assembly in Acta Biomaterialia! In collaboration with the Lampe Lab, we enjoyed reviewing the design, preparation, characterization, and application of assembling peptides. We hope that this will be useful for new and experienced researchers in this field with backgrounds ranging from chemistry to tissue engineering.

  • Rachel gives a talk at Pacifichem in the session, 'Precision Polymer Synthesis and Supramolecular Architectures for Designable Functionality' (held virtually)

November

  • Jack Dunleavy, a 2nd year undergraduate ChE student, joins the lab. Welcome, Jack!

  • Liza and Clare, joint students in our lab and the Lampe Lab, won first place in the MESD undergraduate poster competition at the AIChE meeting - congratulations!

  • Taylor, Liza, Clare, and Rachel present research at the AIChE meeting in Boston

October

  • Our lab attends the Fifth Annual Mid-Atlantic Biomanufacturing Symposium in Charlottesville. Zixian wins first place and Mark wins third place in the poster competition - congratulations! Israt, Vince, Mark, Zixian, Clare, and Liza present research and Rachel co-leads a session on Clinical Translation of Biomaterials.

  • Our lab takes hands-on fire extinguisher training with fire inspector, Doug McGlothlin from UVA EHS. Thanks Doug!

  • Hamsini Muralikrishnan, a 3rd year undergraduate ChE student, and Mara Pettit, a 2nd year ChE student, join the lab. Welcome Hamsini and Mara!

August

  • Israt gives a talk at the Fall ACS meeting in Atlanta

  • Mara, Vince, and Israt become the Letteri lab's first Ph.D. candidates! Congratulations and thank you for your stellar leadership!

July

  • Chris Hawkins, a 4th year undergraduate ChE student, joins the lab to work on antimicrobial peptide-polymer conjugates with Zixian Cui. Welcome, Chris!

  • Lexi, Justin, Liza, and Clare present their work at the Center for Advanced Biomanufacturing Summer Research Symposium

  • Congratulations to Mara and James on publishing their paper in the Journal of Polymer Science! In this work, we highlight the role of buffering in on the solution properties and degradation behavior of poly(amino ester)s to guide their storage and use.

June

  • Lexi Cuomo, a 3rd year ChE undergraduate, and Justin Harrington, a 4th year ChE undergraduate, join the lab! Also, Clare Cocker, a 2nd year ChE undergraduate, and Liza Harold, a 3rd year biomedical engineering undergraduate, join the Lampe and Letteri labs as our first co-advised students! Welcome, Lexi, Justin, Liza, and Clare!

May

  • James Mullin and Emma Laudermilch graduate with their B.S. in chemical engineering - congratulations, and we're so grateful for your contributions as two of the first members of our new group! Emma is working as an engineer at Illumina in San Diego, CA and James is a Ph.D. student in Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware.

  • Mara receives the Department of Chemical Engineering TA award - congratulations, Mara!

  • Our first review article was published as part of the 2021 RSC Biomaterials Science Emerging Investigator Issue! Together with our collaborators Drs. Molly Hughes and Matt Crawford in the Division of Infectious Disease and International Heath within the UVa School of Medicine, we combine polymer/peptide chemistry and infectious disease perspectives to review the design, synthesis, and characterization of antimicrobial peptide-polymer conjugates and highlight the role of molecular architecture on the properties and antimicrobial properties of these conjugates. Congrats to Zixian for leading this effort and to co-authors Qinmo, Mark, Vince, Taylor, and Madeline!

  • Vince's paper with Greg Grewal in the Highley lab was accepted in Biomaterials Science! We show that coiled coil peptides can enable spatiotemporal control of biomolecule binding and on-demand release.

January

  • Jonathan Paul ('JP'), a 3rd year chemical engineering undergraduate, joins the lab. Welcome, JP!

2020

December

  • Rachel gives a talk at the 3rd National Chiao Tung University (Hsinchu, Taiwan) Conference on Organic Synthesis (held virtually)

November

  • Kelly Bukovic (University of Florida) joins the Letteri and Caliari labs as our first jointly advised student!

June

  • Taylor Bloom, a 3rd year ChE student, joins the lab!

May

  • Vince receives an NIH Biotechnology Training Fellowship – congratulations, Vince!

  • Madeline and Becca graduate with their B.S. in chemical engineering – congratulations!

April

March

February

  • Zixian receives a 2019-2020 Gaden Award for exemplary performance in coursework - congratulations, Zixian!

January

  • Gordon Lee, a second year undergraduate ChE student, joins the lab. Welcome, Gordon!

2019

December

  • Rachel gives a talk at the Next Generation Soft Materials Workshop in Savannah, GA

November

  • Graduate students Mark Bannon (M.S., CHE, New Jersey Institute of Technology) and Zixian Cui (M.S. CHE, Carnegie Mellon University) join the lab. Welcome, Mark and Zixian!

September

  • We are certified as a Gold level Green lab by the UVA Sustainability Office– congrats Sustainability Committee and all!

  • Rachel gives a seminar in the Department of Chemistry at UVA

July

  • Mara, Vince, and Rachel attend GPC2019; Rachel gives an early career presentation

  • The Letteri Lab hosts students from the Village School Science Camp

June

  • Rachel gives a talk at the Molecular Engineering of Soft Matter workshop at the Telluride Science Research Center in Telluride, CO

  • Rachel attends the Polymers Gordon Research Conference in South Hadley, MA

May

  • Rachel, Vince and Elyse attend the UVA Brain Symposium

  • Elyse He’bert (Prairie View A&M University ’20, Chemical Engineering) joins the lab!

  • We are certified as a Silver level Green lab by the UVA Sustainability Office– congrats Sustainability Committee and all!

  • The Letteri lab receives hands-on fire extinguisher training with fire inspector, Doug McGlothlin from UVA EHS. Thanks Doug!

April

  • Jessie receives 1st place for her oral presentation in the UVA undergraduate research symposium - congratulations, Jessie!

  • The Letteri Lab co-hosts an event, ‘Polymers: The technology behind marbles, bouncy balls, and gels’ at the Engineering Open House

  • We are certified as a green lab by the UVA Sustainability Office – congrats Sustainability Committee and all!

March

  • Mara, Vince, and Rachel judge the Piedmont Regional Science Fair with other chemical engineering friends from the Caliari, Berger, Giri, and Choi labs!

February

  • Our Waters HPLCs and Tosoh GPC are installed!

  • Justin, Mara, James, and Becca start the Letteri lab sustainability committee!

January

2018

November

  • Our CEM Liberty Blue peptide synthesizer is installed!

  • The Letteri lab attends the 3rd Annual Biomanufacturing Symposium at UVA

  • Madeline Clore (3rd year ChE undergraduate), Justin Fernandes (2nd year ChE undergraduate), and Becca Richardson (3rd year ChE undergraduate) join the lab!

October

  • Graduate students Israt Jahan Duti (Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology), Vince Gray (Youngstown State University), and Mara Kuenen (Bucknell University) join the lab!

September

  • Emma Laudermilch and James Mullin (2nd year ChE undergraduates) join the lab!

August

  • Jessie Eoff (1st year computer science undergraduate) and Julianna Suarez (2nd year ChE undergraduate) join the lab!