5/1/2023 Bethan Owen
At the most recent College Faculty Awards Ceremony, Professor Thomas Gaj received the 2023 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research, and Professor Holly Golecki was awarded the 2023 College Award for Sustained Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Written by Bethan Owen
At the most recent College Faculty Awards Ceremony, the Department of Bioengineering was honored to be represented by Professor Thomas Gaj, who received the 2023 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research, and Professor Holly Golecki, who was awarded the 2023 College Award for Sustained Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Excellence in research
Professor Thomas Gaj’s Award for Excellence in Research represents years of dedication to research in the field of bioengineering. This work has focused on the development of targeted gene therapies for debilitating and currently incurable neurodegenerative diseases like ALS, Huntington’s disease, and more.
Gaj’s laboratory, which works at the interface of synthetic bioengineering and translational neuroscience, is making strides towards the creation of new corrective gene therapies. This is done in large part through the application of gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR; CRISPR technologies can be used to modify different DNA sequences, which opens up a world of possibilities for treating genetic diseases. By combining CRISPR tools with a class of engineered viral gene delivery vehicles known as AAV, Gaj and his lab are developing new classes of precision therapeutics.
Gaj and the students in his lab have a simple goal: “We want to make an impact,” Gaj said. “The technologies and the approaches we work with in our lab have tremendous therapeutic potential. We are committed as a team to helping them realize it, particularly for the neurodegenerative diseases that we study.”
Gaj’s contributions to the Department of Bioengineering throughout his career—from research and publishing to teaching, student advisement and beyond—have been significant.
“We are exceedingly proud of Dr. Gaj’s noteworthy accomplishments in research and have no doubt that he will continue to have a positive impact on the landscape of gene editing, gene therapy and bioengineering,” said Mark Anastasio, Bioengineering Department Head. “We believe that Prof. Gaj’s incredible strides towards treating neurological diseases, his contributions to research in his field, and his impactful contributions to our department set him apart as particularly deserving of the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research.”
In light of this award, Gaj was grateful for the support from his campus collaborators, including fellow bioengineering professor Pablo Perez-Pinera and his lab, including, most notably, the graduate students in it.
“None of what we achieve would be possible without the hard work and dedication of the amazing graduate students in the lab,” Gaj said. “We share a unified goal in that we hope to one day make an impact in people’s lives.”
Excellence in diversity, equity, and inclusion
In a well-deserved acknowledgment of her dedication to making engineering more accessible for everyone, Professor Holly Golecki received the 2023 College Award for Sustained Excellence in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
“Diversity, equity, and inclusion are extremely important to the Department of Bioengineering, and we are fortunate to have a faculty member as committed to these principles as Dr. Golecki,” said Bioengineering Department Head Mark Anastasio. “We are grateful for her hard work, and look forward to the difference she will continue to make within the department.”
In light of the award, Golecki shared her insights on what it means to support inclusion and equity within engineering.
“In order to solve problems for everyone in society, we need everyone represented at the table,” she said. “I try to make a distinct effort to make my classroom inclusive and welcoming to everyone so that students can bring their whole selves to class. When students feel like they can bring their whole selves to class, they’re more likely to innovate in areas that are important to them. And then ultimately, if we have a diversity of students we will have a diversity of solutions to problems.”
Golecki’s involvement in inclusion, diversity and equity goes beyond UIUC campus; one of her ongoing projects involves visiting local high schools and studying what careers students are interested in and why. The original findings suggested that students place a high priority on careers where they will be able to help other people. And unfortunately, few students perceived robotics, Golecki’s area of expertise, as a means to that end.
In response, Golecki has worked to develop programs that teach high school-age students about soft robotics and all the healthcare applications they have.
“We've seen that this program does change students’ minds about the utility of robotics for helping people,” she said. “And the reason that they didn’t see robotics as a helpful field in the first place is because they just haven't been exposed to engineering in general, especially those very specific applications that could align with their core interests of helping people and helping their communities.”
Offering students this exposure to engineering and the myriad of opportunities within engineering itself has been one of the rewarding aspects of Golecki’s inclusion efforts, she said. Golecki plans to continue emphasizing diversity, equity and inclusion throughout her career, with some definitive goals in mind.
“If I'm successful in my career, I will see the field of engineering and maybe even specifically robotics diversified,” she said. “And if I can point to some way in which I contributed to that, I'll feel like I’ve succeeded.”