1/25/2023 Bethan Owen
We’re excited to welcome new teaching faculty member Megan Griebel to the Department of Bioengineering! Recently, we sat down with professor Griebel for a Q&A to learn a little more about her background, passions, and pursuits.
Written by Bethan Owen
We’re excited to welcome new teaching faculty member Megan Griebel to the Department of Bioengineering! Recently, we sat down with professor Griebel for a Q&A to learn a little more about her background, passions, and pursuits.
Q: Tell us a little bit about your academic background.
A: I completed my undergrad education here at the University of Illinois, on the tissue engineering track, and participated in research in Professor Greg Underhill’s lab. I then followed my tissue engineering interests to pursue a PhD at Boston University in Professor Chris Chen's lab. Throughout grad school I studied a number of different aspects of tissue engineering, primarily tissue repair following any type of injury or wound.
My dissertation is all about the study of wound healing in vitro. In my PhD lab, we developed a laser ablation system to generate very precise, reproducible wounds in our stromal tissue-on-chip platform. As we studied the healing process we were able to see how fibroblasts cleared the damaged tissue within our system, which is really interesting because much of the focus on fibroblasts has been on matrix deposition, rather than degradation.. Our system is a new way to study both deposition and degradation in a 3D soft tissue. I have also studied a number of different factors affecting tissue repair, including matrix composition and stromal cell type.
Q: What are you most excited to achieve in this new position?
When I was a student, it was always clear to me when professors came into the classroom and were excited to teach. For a long time now I’ve wanted to be one of these professors who the students can recognize is there for them, as students and as people. That's my primary goal.
I'm super excited that there's a community of teaching professors in the bioengineering department and that they're really engaged in education research. I'm excited to collaborate with this team in order to improve the learning experience for students. During grad school, I really enjoyed collaborating with other people and teaching students and trainees new laboratory techniques and new concepts. That's what drew me back towards the instruction side of science.
Q: What project are you working on currently that you're excited about?
Although it's not a formally established project, I’m very interested in mental health and neurodiversity within the engineering environment. I'm interested in learning how people with ADHD have to adapt in order to be successful in a system that’s not designed for them, for example. That's one of the questions that I'm interested in pursuing.
Q: What are your hobbies outside of work?
A: I have a small dog. He’s a cavapoo, so he's half poodle, half King Charles Cavalier spaniel, and his name is Winston. He is my number one hobby, I would say. I’d love to
occasionally bring him to my office and let students come in and play with him. Apart from that, I enjoy yoga. I like to read a lot. I'm into fantasy books. (Hufflepuff House all the way.)
Q: Is there anything else that you want to share about yourself?
A: I just want to reemphasize to the students who might read this that the reason I'm here now is the students. I really hope that they will feel free to contact me and stop by my office (EL 3250) whether or not they're in my classes. I’m happy to discuss academia, career options, soft skills, mental health, general life experiences, and anything else that students find important.