Ph.D. Student

CBIS

E-mail: gearhj@rpi.edu

Project

Research Focus

My project focuses on utilizing milli-indentation to characterize the mechanical properties of various materials that can exhibit both healthy and diseased tissue states in order to understand how these properties influence cell behavior. I also work on exploring the differences in mechanical properties observed at the tissue level versus the cellular level by comparing measurements obtained via milli-indentation and atomic force microscopy, elucidating the implications that these differences may have in future studies on cellular pathways and metastatic phenotypes.

[1] Jonathan Kulwatno, Jamie Gearhart, Xiangyu Gong, Nora Herzog, Matthew Getzin, Mihaela Skobe, and Kristen L. Mills, "Growth of tumor emboli within a vessel model reveals dependence on the magnitude of mechanical constraint." Integrative Biology 13(1): 1-16, 2021