BME Grad Student Named PEO Scholar

Rebecca Byler, a doctoral student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, was named a recipient of the P.E.O. Scholar Award. This merit-based award is granted to women in doctoral programs in the United States and Canada who demonstrate a high level of academic achievement, global experiences, and potential for having a positive impact on society. Byler was among 100 winners selected from a pool of 928 nominees and received a monetary award to be applied toward study and research.

Byler is advised by Prof. Themis Kyriakides and her research combines cutting-edge areas of biomedical engineering including dermal drug delivery, biomaterials, tissue engineering, nanotechnology, and human-centered design to tackle a neglected tropical disease, cutaneous leishmaniasis. This "flesh-eating" parasitic disease is notable due its disfiguring dermal lesions and chronicity.

Byler recently spent three years pursuing her dissertation research in residence at Centro Internacional de Entrenamiento e Investigaciones Médicas (CIDEIM) in Colombia under the guidance of Dr. Nancy Gore Saravia and is the recipient of a Yale Downs Fellowship, a Whitaker International Fellowship, an NIH Fogarty GHES Fellowship, a Yale Tinker Field Research Award, and a YCCI Multi-disciplinary Predoctoral Fellowship.