At the age of five, she moved with her family to the USA from Lomé, Togo in West Africa. Her father was a math professor who has taught all over Europe and certainly influenced her love for numbers. Her high school math teacher, Mr. Davidson, taught her class for three years and inspired her to continue her interest in math. Onissema-Karimu chose to dive into engineering because it is an ever-changing field. There are countless applications of math and science that can solve some many different problems. She is especially intrigued by the development of human regenerative tissue, so participation in CELL-MET was a great fit for Onissema-Karimu.
Summer 2018, Onissema-Karimu worked in the Chen Lab, focusing on vasculogenesis, or the growth of blood vessels. The abundance of new information was challenging to keep up with, but reading and asking questions kept Onissema-Karimu well on-track. She gained valuable laboratory experience by the end of the summer.
Summer 2019, Onissema-Karimu was a REU participant at the University of Michigan where her research focused on demonstrating the ability to produce alignment in engineered ECMs (eECM) using novel polymer support structures (mainly Poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid)) and establish a pipeline for the characterization of the scaffolds. Previous work demonstrated the alignment of eECM through the control of scaffold architecture (using SU-8) and hydrodynamically inducing fibrillogenesis. For this project, an array of scaffold designs with novel polymers were used to identify the optimal structure for protein integration using the 3D Jet Writing software.
After completing her REU program, Shola earned her Biomedical Engineering BS from Rowan University. She went on to pursue a PhD in biomedical engineering at Cornell University.
