Alumni Spotlights

Tim Padera works to fight cancer and disease by focusing his research on a far-reaching system of the body—the lymphatic system. As part of the Edwin L. Steele Laboratories for Tumor Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Padera Laboratory uses novel intravital microscopy tools to examine how the lymphatic system drives the progression of cancer through metastatic spread as well as impairment in anti-tumor immune function.

Before enrolling in HST’s Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) program, Alisa Morss Clyne was working as a mechanical engineer at General Electric and pursuing a Master’s Degree. In the midst of classes and writing her thesis — on the subject of aircraft engine maintenance — she attended a lecture about the biomechanics of the heart.

“It was fascinating,” she says. “I decided that I wanted to apply my work to helping people.”

The Making of a Serial Inventor-Entrepreneur

In November 2014, Flagship Ventures announced Geoffrey von Maltzahn’s third company since joining the firm, his seventh, if you include the four he co-founded as a graduate student in HST’s Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) PhD program. The company, Symbiota, aims to tackle a completely new space for von Maltzahn: agriculture.

As an undergraduate, Maya Barley was studying electrical engineering, but she wanted to be a doctor. And an astronaut. While doing a summer internship at NASA, she happened across HST’s Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) PhD program. “I’d found the magical combination of medical experience and engineering,” she says. “I said, this is it. This, or nothing.”