Elizabeth awarded NIH F31

Elizabeth was awarded a prestigious F31 National Research Service Predoctoral Award from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. Her fellowship, entitled, "Dissecting the impact of extracellular matrix mechanical integrity and endothelial dysfunction on aneurysm formation in vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome" takes a highly multidisciplinary approach, grounded in soft matter mechanics to better understand how mutations in the COL3A1 gene lead to aneurysms in patients with vascular Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (vEDS). vEDS is a devastating disease for which there are no FDA-approved therapies and for which complication rate due to surgery remains high. Elizabeth's fellowship will fund her continued hard work to better understand the disease with the goal of developing more effective interventional approaches for treatment.