Julia Van Der Marel

Julia Van Der Marel

Biography

Julia Van Der Marel is a rising junior at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) pursuing a degree in Chemical Engineering on the Biotechnology track. She is a member of the UMBC Meyerhoff Scholars Program, the NIH Undergraduate Research Initiative for Student Enhancement (U-RISE) Program, the UMBC Honors College, and Tau Beta Pi, where she strives to contribute to a diverse and inclusive scientific community. Her background as a type 1 diabetic drives her to pursue a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and work as a researcher focusing on disease diagnostics, treatment, and prevention. At UMBC, she researches at the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology under the supervision of Dr. Govind Rao and Dr. Chad Sundberg, focusing on a nascent alternative to cell-based biomanufacturing called cell-free protein synthesis. Her current project focuses on using cell-free protein synthesis to create a deployable system which can produce therapeutics on site anywhere in the world. Her goal is to make these systems fast, efficient, and less costly in both production and purification. She also worked last summer under the supervision of Dr. Bryan Bryson of the MIT Biological Engineering Department to investigate the formation of intracytoplasmic lipid droplets to further inform Tuberculosis research. It is hypothesized that intracytoplasmic lipid droplets are one mechanism through which bacteria such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria behind the leading infectious disease Tuberculosis, are able to facilitate their own survival when engulfed by macrophages. The formation of lipid droplets in bacteria is currently poorly understood, and further investigation could yield results with clinical significance for Tuberculosis treatment.