New post-doctoral fellows join BME through B2F program
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Victoria Laney and Lucinda Williamson have joined the Richard and Loan Hill Department of Biomedical Engineering through UIC’s Bridge to Faculty program. This university-wide program provides postdoctoral experience for candidates from underrepresented backgrounds.
Initially, neither Laney nor Williamson were sure they wanted to pursue academia, but this program helped both with its formalized review process that allows the transition from post-doctorate fellow to assistant professor, the competitive benefits compared to other post-doctoral fellow positions, and the freedom and flexibility to design their own trajectory.
“Chicago has a lot of opportunities in terms of institutions,” Laney said. “There’s a big patient population that you can tap into, especially if you’re doing clinical work, and having that access is invaluable. Chicago is a very diverse city. I think that there are pockets for everyone in terms of the cultural sense and clinically.”
Williamson said Chicago is very exciting from a technical standpoint to do research and work with people, both as participants and as colleagues, and also has a supportive community. She also has family in the Chicagoland area, which is a bonus.
Another big attraction for Laney to UIC was that it’s a minority-serving institution, as she did a lot of outreach work with underrepresented or historically excluded individuals with her PhD program and her department’s administration.
She also echoed Williamson’s sentiment about academia seeming intimidating, but it helped Laney see how important it is to have mentors and an infrastructure or people in place who are willing to go to bat for you. More than allyship, she sees how important it is to have people who are actively putting their money where their mouth is and changing the system.
Laney’s research is focused on molecular imaging of gastrointestinal and gynecological cancers. This work stemmed from her master’s degree on the characterization of inflammatory environments in women’s health to develop drugs and therapies and microparticle tracking. It’s also influenced by her PhD research in MR imaging and drug delivery for cancers.
Williamson’s research is in the sports biomechanics realm. Specifically, she is building more accessible motion capture tools using marker-less computer vision. In doing so, she hopes to assess different treatments and interventions and their surgical effectiveness through movement data.
She is currently figuring out which clinical population she wants to work with and is also starting to work with UIC athletics to get out of the clinical space a bit and more into the sports biomechanics field.
Williamson is also working at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab with Richard and Loan Hill Professor Jim Patton, who also works as a senior research scientist at the Shirley Ryan, among other Shirley Ryan faculty. She is also working with mentors in the departments of kinesiology and nutrition.
Laney’s mentorship team is comprised of Department of Pharmacy Assistant Professor Steve Lee, Department of Radiology and Bioengineering Associate Professor Kejia Cai, BME Assistant Professor Muge Karaman, Richard and Loan Hill Professor Ian Papautsky, and informally mentored by Department Head and Professor Tom Royston and Dean of the College of Engineering and Professor Lola Eniola-Adefeso.
“I’m excited for the science and the technical choices that I’ve been afforded to make,” Williamson said. “My mentorship team has been extremely helpful, but it’s also been interesting in the way that you really are tasked with starting your lab. I think that’s been a little overwhelming and daunting and trying to gain new technical skills, build myself up technically, and navigate how you do things such as an institutional review board with UIC.”
Laney graduated with her Bachelor of Science in chemical and biomolecular engineering and Master of Science in engineering from the Johns Hopkins University and her PhD from Case Western Reserve University.
Williamson graduated with her Bachelor of Science and PhD in biomedical/medical engineering from the University of Iowa.