Olufunmilayo (Funmi) Adebayo received her B.S. (2011) in biomedical engineering and professional writing from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and her M.S. (2015) and Ph.D. (2017) from Cornell University, under the mentorship of Dr. Marjolein van der Meulen. Her research focused on examining the relationship between knee joint kinematics and cartilage degradation in a load-induced preclinical model of osteoarthritis.
As a Ph.D. student, Adebayo was funded by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a Sloan Graduate Fellowship, and the Robert and Helen Appel Fellowship for Biomedical Research. Outside the lab, she served as a coordinator for the LSAMP Program in the Office of Diversity Programs in Engineering, and as a Graduate Resident Fellow in Becker House.
After graduating, Adebayo joined the Biomechanics Department at the Hospital of Special Surgery (HSS) as a post-doctoral fellow. Under the mentorship of Dr. Suzanne Maher, she investigated the contact mechanics and kinematics of the human knee joint during injury. During her time at HSS, she was awarded the Stryker/Orthopaedic Research Society Women’s Research Fellowship.
In July 2018, Adebayo was appointed as Assistant Dean for Inclusion and Engagement in the Graduate School at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In this role, she directs the Graduate School efforts to promote diversity and inclusion at UMass Amherst. Her goal is to support and empower students from traditionally underrepresented groups to successfully pursue and complete their graduate degrees.
Erica Pratt's doctoral work in Dr. Brian Kirby's lab focused on investigating circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood system of patients with solid tumors and how these cells can be used as a noninvasive tumor surrogate, and as prognostic biomarkers for survival in advanced disease. Read more about Erica D. Pratt, Ph.D. 2015
Ziemian seeks to understand the underlying mechanisms of osteoarthritis, in order to develop therapeutic strategies that will successfully prevent or drastically slow the progression of the disease. Read more about Sophia Ziemian, Ph.D. ’20
As a tenure-track assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Arkansas, Young Hye currently directs a lab that uses tissue engineering strategies to study cancer-nerve crosstalk and traumatic neural injuries. Read more about Young Hye Song, Ph.D. 2016
