Alex Dumas

Alex is an MD-PhD student from Durban, South Africa, who is interested in developing biomaterials for pediatric patient populations. She recently completed her undergraduate degree in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania with a minor in Chemistry. During Alex's undergraduate studies, she conducted research in the lab of Dr. Riccardo Gottardi at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where her work focused on the development of decellularized meniscus scaffolds for cartilage tissue engineering with applications in the upper airway and the meniscus. Additionally, Alex worked to further characterize cartilage-resident progenitor cells - a highly proliferative cell type easily harvested from ear cartilage- as an alternate cell source for cartilage tissue engineering. From these experiences, Alex realized the need for biomaterials designed and tested in a way tailored to pediatric physiology. At Yale, Alex hopes to further explore pediatric-specific biomaterials while learning more about the unique biomaterial-derived foreign body response that occurs in children and how this may be leveraged to create novel immunomodulatory materials. In her free time Alex enjoys cooking, running and watercolor painting.