Experience Profile: Kara Spiller, Trailblazer in Biomedical Engineering

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URBN Professor of Biomedical Engineering and alumna Kara L. Spiller, BS/MS '07 and PhD '10, has dedicated her career to furthering knowledge of immune engineering and other advanced therapies. A rapidly growing field, immune engineering endeavors to harness the healing power of the immune system for regenerative medicine and has a wide array of biomedical applications.

During her undergraduate career at Drexel, Spiller was in the first class of STAR (Students Tackling Advanced Research) Scholars, where she discovered her love for research. After graduating with her bachelor's and master's degrees in biomedical engineering in 2007, she continued at Drexel, completing her PhD in biomedical engineering in 2010.

Now a professor at Drexel, her research interests include the role of immune cells in tissue repair and regeneration, the design of immunomodulatory biomaterials and international engineering education. She organized the first Immune Modulation Engineering Symposium in 2019, which has become an annual event.

Q: What did you learn about yourself and the world through your Drexel experience?

A: As a student at Drexel and later as a faculty member, I had the opportunity to travel to other countries (China, Australia, Israel and others) to facilitate collaborations with researchers who were working on similar problems (regeneration of damaged tissues, especially cartilage, skin and muscle). I learned that the unique background of each scientist (especially societal culture and scientific training) caused them to take a different approach to tackling problems. When we worked together, we generated wildly creative ideas that I never would have come up with on my own.

I started actively seeking out this effect by looking for researchers with very different backgrounds from me, even within my own country, including different types of engineers, scientists and physicians. Every time we plan a new project, I get the same rush of excitement realizing that I could never conduct this project without the other person, and they could never conduct it without me. It keeps the research fun and interesting, which keeps me motivated to continue working hard.

Q: How has your time at Drexel had a lasting impact on you as well as others?

A: When I was a first-year undergraduate student at Drexel, I had no idea what research was. I had never even met a researcher. Nonetheless, I was accepted into Drexel's first class of the STAR (Students Tackling Advanced Research) Scholars program, which supports undergraduate students to conduct research full-time for the entire summer following their first year. I immediately fell in love with research - the hands-on approach to learning, the opportunity to use my creativity to design experiments and present the results to others, the autonomy and independence and the potential to contribute to a greater goal. It became my lifelong passion. Now, I always give opportunities to young students to try out research for the first time because you just never know who is going to click with research like I did.

Q: What was a uniquely-Drexel moment that shifted how you think or what you wanted to do in the future?

A: My research is part of the relatively new and rapidly growing field of immune engineering, in which we apply engineering principles to harness the immune system for therapeutic benefit for a wide variety of biomedical applications. In 2019, I thought it would be fun to host a small symposium at Drexel to bring together immune engineers from around the country, since there were no scientific conferences dedicated to the topic at the time. Without hesitation, several other faculty and staff members across multiple departments and schools at Drexel joined me in organizing it. It was so successful that we turned it into an annual symposium, and it just keeps getting better (we're currently planning the 8th annual symposium later this year).

Through this effort we have hosted hundreds of scientists, engineers and clinicians from around the world, who are all working on different ways to modulate the immune system to cure disease. From the beginning, this effort has benefited from strong support from Drexel senior leadership, including the provost and vice president of research, as well as deans of multiple schools across the university and many dedicated faculty and staff members. We've also expanded our efforts to bring educational programming in immune engineering and other areas of advanced therapies (e.g., cell and gene therapy) to students through interdisciplinary courses, workshops and degree programs - all of which benefit from coordination across many different disciplines. This extremely supportive, collaborative, team-based culture is uniquely Drexel.

Q: How has working with students at Drexel shaped your approach to teaching or research?

A: I have learned that students really drive research projects. If a student enjoys the research, the project is going to be successful, and if they do not, the project is not going to be successful, no matter what. I try very hard to make sure each project is a good fit for each student, and I look for ways to give them ownership, such as encouraging them to seek out collaborations that would push the project in new directions. I also try to help each student find their own way to stay motivated to keep working towards big goals, because I know I cannot do it for them.

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