Biology
Rachel Wardlow is a veterinarian (DVM) with a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree in epidemiology. She earned her DVM degree from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. She earned her MPH degree from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition to formal education, while a veterinary student she completed an Epidemiology Elective internship with the Centers for Disease Control by travelling to work with the Haitian government to decrease human and animal rabies. She also completed an internship with the Oklahoma State Epidemiologist/Veterinarian. Rachel has also travelled to South Africa to learn more about conservation and wildlife medicine. Prior research areas include physiological stress responses in beef cattle and vector-borne disease epidemiology in domestic animals and local tick populations.
Her foundation in infectious disease training and experience in microbiology provide a platform for her ongoing research in targeted chronic wound therapies. Rachel currently works in the Targeted Therapy & Nanoparticle Laboratory at Oklahoma State University with Dr. Ashish Ranjan. Present research involves therapy using targeted nanoparticles and mild hyperthermia for treatment of wounds. In addition, in vivo studies are in progress for exploring the use of targeted nanotherapy in wound and osteomyelitis animal models. Future studies include the use of antibodies to make the nanoparticles more specific in their targeting to wounds and incorporating bioluminescent bacteria to perform in vivo wound progression tracking.
Clinical
Zachary Yong received an MBBS degree from Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore in May 2015. He subsequently obtained his MRCS from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in October 2016. He is currently a second year resident at the department of General Surgery in Singapore General Hospital, SingHealth Singapore.
Having a strong interest in clinical research, Dr Yong has given several oral and poster presentations in multiple international conferences since medical school. He is currently working on several publications and research under the mentorship of Adj Assoc Prof Teo Ching Ching Melissa, the Head of Department of Surgical Oncology at National Cancer Centre Singapore.
On top of that, Dr Yong has a keen interest in Stem Cell research and has bench work experience in culturing induced pluripotent stem cells in the Genome Institute of Singapore, A*STAR. He has attended several stem cell symposiums and has been a member of the Singapore Stem Cell Society since 2012.
His current research interest includes Surgical Oncology and Stem Cell Biology. He has the inclination to pursue his PhD in Stem Cell Biology in the near future.
Physics/engineering
Raquel Martínez Valdez is an electronic and communications engineer (IEC) with a Sc.D. in Electrical Engineering. She earned her IEC degree from Tecnológico de Monterrey (Campus Estado de México, México). She earned the Master in Science Degree from the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (CINVESTAV) at the Bioelectronics Section of the Electrical Engineering Department, Mexico City, in 2011. She earned the Doctor in Science Degree from the same section of CINVESTAV in 2015 where she was a team member of the Laboratory of Electromagnetic and Ultrasonic Radiations (LAREMUS).
During her doctoral training, while preparing her PhD thesis in 2011, she completed a research stay at the Ultrasound Laboratory (LUS) of the Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute – COPPE of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Afterwards, she had a research stay at Centre de Recherche en Automatique de Nancy of the University of Lorraine, Nancy, France, in 2013. Later, she completed another research stay at the Ultrasonic Visualization and Detection (VIDEUS) Laboratory (R&D Group “Ultrasonic Systems & Technologies”) of the Institute of Physical and Information Technologies of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain, in 2014. Her doctoral thesis was developed on the theme of the analysis of high intensity focused ultrasound for extracorporeal medical applications (acoustic propagation modelling, experimentation in phantom and ex vivo validation). All doctoral training and research stays were possible thanks to the scholarship (no. 219341) granted by CONACyT and the projects SUCoDiC-CYTED, CONACyT-F-SALUD No. 201590, CONACyT-F-SALUD No. 201256, M10-S20 ECOS-ANUIES-CONACyT and Fondo Mixto de Cooperación México-Uruguay (SER-AUCI) 2012–2013.
Prior research areas include: electronic driving of piezoelectric transducers, high-intensity focused ultrasound, acoustic propagation analysis in tissues and phantoms, and ultrasonic diffraction modelling. Her experience in both fields, FEM modelling of ultrasonic diffraction in complex pieces, and ultrasonic propagation in tissue mimicking materials, is applied in her current research around non-invasive thermal therapies induced by ultrasonic energy.
Raquel currently works at the Polytechnic University of Chiapas, México, in the Biomedical Engineering Department. Present research involves the use of focused ultrasound (FUS) for hyperthermia and ablation therapies in treatment of tumours. In addition, advances around ultrasonic characterisation of new tissues, development of tissue phantoms under ultrasound, and acoustic propagation modelling are in progress for in vitro FUS ablation therapy testing. Further studies include ex vivo experimentation to validate modelling results, prior to performing in vivo research.