The Santerre lab is excited to welcome two new thesis students from the Chemical Engineering department this fall. Daniel and Matthew both join the team with varied lists of experiences and a strong desire to explore their respective projects.

Daniel is in his fourth year of Chemical Engineering and has an expanding interest in cardiology. His curiosity originated from his past research in soft artificial heart design and 3D bioprinted muscle characterization at ETH Zürich. His journey has now led him to join the Santerre Lab, where he will explore another aspect of the cardiovascular system under PhD candidate Katya D’Costa: vasculature. His bachelor’s thesis project will focus on further developing vascular smooth muscle grafts to address the limitations of autografts as small-diameter vessel transplants. Specifically, he will evaluate how extracellular matrix changes during in-vivo implantation and scaffold material modification affect the resulting cellular and proteomic composition. While Daniel isn’t staying busy in the lab, he enjoys creating laser cutter designs and taking his camera for walks.

Matthew is a fourth year Chemical Engineering student at the University of Toronto. Previously, he worked on developing collagen hydrogels for bone tissue engineering applications along with heart and kidney-on-a-chip platform projects for disease modelling and drug discovery. He is currently pursuing a thesis to further explore his passion in biomaterials at the Santerre Lab under the supervision of research associate Dr. Suja Shrestha. His project seeks to investigate the delivery of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing system into HEK293T cells using oligo-urethane nanoparticles with the ultimate goal of treating Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Specifically, he will be evaluating the cytotoxicity and stability of the nanoparticles as well as determining the uptake mechanism of the nanoparticles in the cells. Outside the lab, Matthew enjoys playing billiards, travelling, and cooking.