Home Department: Physics

2021 Research Project: “A Fluidic System for Long Time-Lapse Imaging of Adult Zebrafish”

2021 Mentor: Stephen Quake (Bioengineering and Applied Physics)

The T cells and B cells of the adaptive immune system are thought to be essential in detecting and destroying early-stage malignancies throughout our lives. However, because these early-stage tumors remain undetectable in the vast majority of instances, it is difficult to study this process. Gabriela is combining an endogenous zebrafish melanoma model with transgenic fluorescent labeling of B and T cells to directly image the interactions between these cells and early malignancies. She is working with the Quake lab to engineer a system that allows for imaging all regions of the animal model over a long period of time.
 

2023 Research Project: "A Portable Microscope for Nailfold Capillaroscopy"

2023 Mentor: Stephen Quake (Bioengineering and Applied Physics)

Nailfold capillaroscopy is commonly used to monitor the state of various diseases with vascular manifestations. In visualizing blood flow in the fingers, Gabriela hopes to create a microscope to observe changes over time in diseases such as diabetes that affect the blood flow. Ensuring that this microscope is portable will allow for data collection on many healthy and sick patients such that we can compare blood flow between the two and validate our microscope as a prognostic tool.