Brown engineering’s Riley Renee Flores ’22.5 was honored with a best research presentation award at the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers’ national convention held last week in Charlotte, N.C. Almost 10,000 attendees joined the largest gathering of Hispanics in STEM, which included individual gatherings for pre-college, academic, SHPEtinas, Professionals in STEM and SHPETech.
Flores’ presentation “A Device For Multiplexed Processing of Glioblastoma Spheroids” was supervised by Ph.D. candidate Cel Welch. Flores’ lab contributions include designing hardware and software for a low-cost multiplex tissue disaggregation device that applies Welch’s novel, patented technique, for the isolation of single cells using electric fields.
“I owe so much to the Tripathi Lab. Working here has allowed me to find my closest mentors, Cel Welch and Dr. (Anubhav) Tripathi. They see the best in me and continuously push me to reach my highest potential. Being a member of this lab has also helped me to solidify my goals beyond Brown, including pursuing a graduate degree with an interest in biosensors and diagnostic devices. They are a part of the reason why I am here today, and I only hope I can pass it forward to the next generation.”
As a three-year officer of Brown’s student SHPE chapter, Flores is also a monitor in the Brown Design Workshop and plans to pursue a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering. She will complete her undergraduate degree in December.