HST MEMP PhD student Kimberly Bennett received a Koch Institute Image Award for her work portraying research on tackling drug delivery problems for treating pediatric brain tumors
Catherine Hayes | HST
When Kimberly Bennett first arrived at MIT to begin her Medical Engineering and Medical Physics (MEMP) PhD degree, she recalls how she would regularly walk by the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, admiring the images displayed in the first-floor gallery and thinking how amazing it would be to see her own research hanging there one day.
The Koch Institute Public Gallery on the first floor has been used to display the winning images from the annual Koch Institute (KI) Image Awards since 2011. These images, which recognize and celebrate the extraordinary visuals being produced during research at MIT, are displayed in the gallery for a year to allow visitors to learn more about the science behind the projects.
Now, upon becoming one of ten 2025 KI Image Award winners, Bennett is proud that her winning research image is displayed on the gallery wall of the KI. Bennett’s image "Navigating the Brain Space: One Chip at a Time” depicts a self-assembling microvascular network and shows how this organ-on-a-chip system faithfully replicates human brain vasculature, so that researchers like herself can screen and test for more clinically promising nanoparticle formulations and drug delivery strategies for rare pediatric brain tumors.
Journey to MEMP
As a first-generation college graduate from a lower income community, Bennett’s journey to MIT was a different experience compared to most of her HST peers. Originally introduced to science through television shows, her decision to pursue a scientific research career and contributing to the advancement of human health was solidified after witnessing friends and family members battle various diseases. Bennett’s application and acceptance into college was a critical milestone for her, made more powerful after attending a school system that lacked extensive AP-level scientific coursework. Bennett lived in a remote region that lacked many internship opportunities or outreach initiatives, and she was raised in a community that discouraged higher education as a viable option, where some promoted a deep distrust in the scientific medical system.
“Experiencing the real-life effects of socioeconomic, racial, and regional determinants of health firsthand” she said. “I am also acutely aware that these same factors play into the demographics of who pursues college, and subsequently who enters academic or industry careers.”
The encouragement, guidance, and mentorship that Bennett received throughout her school years—from schoolteachers to undergraduate research advisors—is what helped to shape her into the translational researcher and medical engineer she is today, Bennett now says. Perhaps the most critical component of her journey to MEMP came in the form of the now-discontinued NIH MARC U*STAR program, an undergraduate honors research training program that sought to increase the number of underrepresented minorities in biomedical, behavioral, and related sciences research. The program’s sponsorship allowed her to attend the ABRCMS conference where she first learned about the Health Sciences and Technology (HST) program at MIT.
At that conference, she discovered that HST’s values and research mission aligned with her own translational research interests, and she was drawn to the fact that one of the program’s primary features allows PhD students to interface with patients in a clinical setting. Her desire to attend MIT only grew, culminating with her acceptance and enrollment in HST.
Bringing Light to Pediatric Research
Now in her fourth year of the MEMP degree program, her current research focuses primarily on tackling drug delivery problems for treating pediatric brain tumors, including diffuse midline glioma, a 100% fatal and inoperable tumor where most patients succumb to their tumors within a year of diagnosis.
“A major obstacle in treating these tumors is that there are currently no approved drug therapies available, such as chemotherapies, largely due to the inability of the drugs to get to the tumors in a high enough quantity to have an impact,” Bennett said.
Under the mentorship of her co-advisors Dr. Paula Hammond, a chemical engineer at MIT, and Dr. Joelle Straehla, a pediatric neuro-oncologist from DFCI/BCH, now at Seattle Children’s Hospital, Bennett has developed a microfluidic platform that recapitulates this vascular biology in vitro. The remainder of her thesis research will utilize this platform for screening nanoparticle drug carrier systems and investigate targeted delivery to glioma cells.
The remarkable nature and imagery of Bennett’s research would eventually lead her to be selected for a KI Image Award. This past spring, the Institute unveiled the images at a ceremony and was the first to be opened to the entire MIT community. There Bennett had the remarkable opportunity to connect with a mother who had sadly lost her son to the type of pediatric brain tumor that Bennett is researching.
“Being able to spend time with her, talking about him, scrolling through photos of him, thinking about all of the research being conducted that could have benefited him but will help others in the future, and sharing this moment of personal grief yet relief with her is truly what makes this award—and the science that I and others do—so worth it,” said Bennett.
At the opening ceremony, Bennett presented a lightning talk detailing the story behind her image and the impact that her research could have within the scientific community—particularly for those studying and treating pediatric brain cancer. Current cancer research initiatives and innovations are focused on developing medical devices and therapies for adult patients, with pediatric cancer patients being overlooked or treated with “scaled down” versions of adult treatments. In addition to Bennett’s primary research goal of creating a pediatric-focused drug delivery system to help treat rare brain tumors within this patient population, she also hopes that her research will help bring awareness to the devasting impact that limited available treatment options can have on patients and their families.
“As a clinically oriented scientist, I believe it's not only important to engage with our communities to establish trust in science and medicine, but to open an avenue directly to the patients and their families that we are researching diagnostics and treatments for. At the end of the day, we pursue this career for the advancement of human health, so they should be centered in the work that we do.”