Spotlight on Biomedical Engineering

Student highlight

Name: Haylee Wagner
Degree: Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering
Faculty lab: Professor Shelly Peyton

What are your career goals? 

I hope to pursue a career in biomedical research focused on understanding complex diseases like cancer and translating discoveries into new therapeutic approaches that improve patient outcomes. Tufts has helped me build a strong foundation in both fundamental science and translational thinking, while providing mentorship that encourages me to answer these challenging scientific questions.

Best Tufts course you’ve taken so far?  

BME 194 (Engineering Cancer) has been especially meaningful because we had the opportunity to speak directly with cancer patients about their experiences. Hearing their stories made the clinical impact of our lab’s research feel much more tangible and personal, but also reinforced that there is still so much work to be done to understand this disease.

Why Tufts?

Tufts felt like the right balance of rigorous research and a genuinely supportive community. The BME community is especially close-knit, and the openness of both faculty and students to mentor and support budding scientists like myself really stood out to me.

What are you researching?

I study how the extracellular matrix—the protein network surrounding cells—varies across tissues and how its interaction with cancer cells can influence drug response. I create tissue-specific matrices using fibroblasts from different anatomical sites and use those matrices to better understand how the organ microenvironment contributes to therapy resistance.

Favorite thing about living in the Medford/Somerville area?

I love how vibrant and diverse the area is. Coming from a small rural town, I appreciate that there are tons of great restaurants, shops, and parks within walking distance - and it’s easy to get into Boston while still feeling like you’re in a small neighborhood. It’s a really fun place to live while in graduate school.

Any advice for prospective graduate students?

Talk to as many graduate students as you can before choosing a program. They’ll give you the most honest sense of the culture. While the research fit is important you should prioritize picking a program where the mentorship and learning environment will help you grow as an individual.

Faculty highlight: Professor and Chair Shelly Peyton

Professor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering Shelly Peyton leads a dynamic group of engineers, biologists, and scientists, with a mission to learn how the information from a cell's chemical and physical tissue environment influences how they move, grow, and respond to drugs in different tissue environments. She uses engineering expertise to build synthetic environments in which to culture cells, and biological expertise to ensure these environments represent a cell's native extracellular matrix (ECM). Her lab uses these combined approaches to find new ways to stop cancer metastasis, discover more effective cancer drugs, understand how traumatic brain injury starts and stops, and build scaffolds for regenerative medicine.