Nicole Day has been selected as the recipient of the 2023 Acta Student Award for her primary contribution to the manuscript titled, “Tissue-adhesive hydrogel for multimodal drug release to immune cells in skin,” published in the September 2022 edition of Acta Biomaterialia.

Day is a rising fifth-year chemical and biological engineering PhD student in CU Boulder’s Shields Lab, where her research focuses on developing particle-based systems to improve the delivery of cancer immunotherapies. The goal of her work is to enhance the effectiveness of current treatments while minimizing adverse side effects by precisely controlling the timing and targeted delivery sites of these therapies.

“This award is an exciting honor because it recognizes more than the impact of my research, but also looks comprehensively at my graduate career,” Day said.  “Additionally, the work we are doing is extremely important; it’s exciting to be recognized from among a pool of applicants across many disciplines.”

Day was the sole recipient for Acta Biomaterialia’s prestigious award, which includes a $2,000 prize.  The award will be presented to her during the Acta Symposium at the TMS 2024 Annual meeting & Exhibition in Orlando, Florida, in March. She has also been invited to present a poster during the reception. 

Assistant Professor Wyatt Shields said the award acknowledges both the excellence of Nicole’s work as well as her article.

“This award builds on Nicole's already impressive list of accomplishments and is a testament to her ingenuity, rigorousness and resolve,” Shields said.  

Acta Biomaterialia is an international journal that publishes peer-reviewed original research reports, review papers and communications within the broad field of biomaterials science. The journal emphasizes the relationship between biomaterial structure and function at various length scales.