Yaowen Zhang, Ananya Sethiya, and Shravani Vitalapuram are the first M.S. students to graduate from the Department of Bioengineering and the Kravets Lab - Congratulations! 

Thank you for being a part of the team - we will miss you! Good luck with your bright futures at the Stanford University, Thermo Fisher, and Sanford Burnham Institute. 

Fun times co-advising Norwegian students with Dr. Andy Edwards, Simula Research Institute. 

M.S. and Ph.D. students came to learn about UCSD Bioengineering research and present their results of computational simulations of pancreatic islets with hub cells. Our own Shane Browne generated the idea of the project and helped guide the students. Great work team :)

We are celebrating our graduates: 

M.S. Annanya Sethiya starting her Research Associate II position at Sanford Burnham Prebys Institute; M.S. Yaowen Zhang securing her Research Associate position at Stanford University; and M.S. Nirmala Balasenthilkumaran transitioning to Ph.D. in Kravets Lab and publishing a first author paper.

Nirmala Balasenthilkumaran, Ph.D student presented our new work on insulitis. He shows that alpha-cell-rich regions in the pancreatic islets of diabetic mice are preferentially targeted by immune cells. A wonderful collaboration with the Friedman Group, CU Denver. 

This work was presented at the Annual Pediatrics Research Symposium, School of Medicine, UCSD. Congratulations on a first poster and exciting discovery!

Dr. David Ramirez receives an Integrated Islet Distribution Program (IIDP)'s Data Resource Trainee Scholar Award. He will be studying how alpha and beta cell function and coverage in pancreatic islets relates to loss of the first phase insulin secretion in human donors with different stages of diabetes. Congratulations, David!

Dr. Kravets received a Pilot and Feasibility Award from the UCSD/UCLA Diabetes Research Center to study role of glucose and fatty acids on heterogeneous metabolism patterns in pancreatic islets of Langerhans. We will apply multi-photon microscopy to image function and metabolic signatures at the cellular level in healthy and diabetic conditions to see whether some cell subpopulations are more vulnerable to metabolic stress.

David Ramirez, Ph.D visited the Kravets Lab.

He has accepted the offer to join the lab and is coming back in July as a Postdoctoral Fellow. 

Dr. Ramirez will investigate the role of beta cell networks and functional heterogeneity in type 1 diabetes and in healthy pancreatic tissue.

Wellcome, David! We are so glad you are now a part of the team!

Kravets Lab's journey began at the Department of Bioengineering (jointly with Department of Pediatrics). We are located at the PFBH 461. Motivated students and postdoctoral fellows are welcome to contact us for available positions!