By Jena Salem
VCU College of Engineering

Ellie Sabalewski has made the most of her close connection to Virginia Commonwealth University. She went to high school right near campus – at the Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School. And while there, she joined a VCU College of Engineering program that has propelled her undergraduate studies.

The Dean’s Early Research Initiative, now called Summer Research Opportunities in Engineering, introduced her to biomedical engineering during her senior year at Maggie Walker. This gave her the opportunity to join a research program that intensified her interest in the field, and her work in the Laboratory for Musculoskeletal Research and Innovation has been focused on development of longer-lasting bone implants.

“I was interested in this program because I had taken an introduction to engineering course at my high school that I really enjoyed, and I was always very interested in medicine without the interest in becoming a medical doctor,” Sabalewski said. “Biomedical engineering seemed perfect, and this program would allow me to try it out before attending college.”

The tryout has been successful. Although she had no prior knowledge of the subject, Sabalewski grew to care deeply about improving bone and dental implants by exploring microenvironments and the quality of different titanium surfaces. Her focus is on understanding how semaphorin 3C, a nerve-derived factor, affects the connection of bone with an implant (osseointegration). 

Research programs such as VCU Engineering’s summer fellowship offer students insight into engineering fields while getting them ahead of the curve, through lab experience and skill development, if they choose to pursue such work.

“The most important skills I have learned have been how to think critically as a researcher,” said Sabalewski, who graduates in May with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering. “Physically running the experiments and those skills have certainly been fun to learn over the years, but understanding the greater meaning behind the work and how it intertwines with current literature is really exciting.”

She offered high praise to graduate student mentors Jingyao Deng and Cydney Dennis, as well as engineering professors Barbara Boyan, Ph.D, and Josh Cohen, M.D., whose association with the musculoskeletal lab and summer program inspired her journey.

Sabalewski also noted how the pandemic had an unexpected benefit for her trajectory into the research initiative and beyond.

“My senior year of high school was still during the COVID lockdown, so I completed most of my work remotely – including becoming familiar with the literature regarding my research topic and performing image data analysis,” she said. “Honestly, it was a great distraction from the monotony of lockdown, as I was able to learn about something new and exciting that I wanted to pursue more in the future.”

With the transition to college, balancing academics and lab work presented a new learning curve Sabalewski had to navigate. But doing so also clarified the value of embracing the opportunity, which now is pointing her to graduate school. She plans to pursue a Ph.D. in bioengineering at Rice University starting in the fall.

“From participating in undergraduate research, I learned that I have a great passion for academic research – and that I want to continue with it,” she said.