Vanessa Moran

Vanessa attends the University of Massachusetts Amherst, majoring in Microbiology with a minor in Spanish. Her time as an REU at Boston University was her first research experience beyond the classroom, and wants to pursue a graduate degree following undergrad.

Engineering microenvironment-triggered self-reporting immunotherapy: Vanessa’s project, working alongside Liang Hao in the Hao lab, was to develop a precision-targeted plasmid that enhances cancer immunotherapy while enabling real-time, non-invasive monitoring through molecular cloning. She was mentored by Dr. Feiyang Deng.

“I think my favorite part of lab this summer was being in a new field of STEM. I was one of the students not majoring in engineering and this summer really helped me open the doors to other futures I didn’t think about.”

Learn more about Vanessa’s research!